Abstract
Oases on the Tibetan Plateau serve as vital buffers in the arid alpine zone, sustaining ecological security under high-altitude conditions; however, their soil quality remains underexplored. This study addresses the limitations of traditional soil assessment methods—which lack defined thresholds and are poorly adapted to spatial heterogeneity—by applying multifractal analyses to determine risk-screening values and background concentrations for 20 soil elements in the Delingha-Ulan Oasis, northeastern Tibetan Plateau, using 1517 samples. The model was validated by comparing the screening values of six regulated elements (e.g., Cd, Hg, As, Pb, Cu, Zn) with the corresponding national standards, enabling robust evaluation of unregulated elements (e.g., B, Ge, Se). Results reveal multifractal patterns, with nine elements (e.g., Cd, I) showing heavy-tailed distribution indicative of localized contamination risks, and Hg, N, and P reflecting subtle anthropogenic impacts from wolfberry farming and pastoral activities. Notably, iodine exhibits extreme enrichment, posing significant ecological threats. This framework fills a critical gap in alpine oasis soil benchmarks, enhancing pollution identification and ecological management in fragile plateau ecosystems. These findings offer a scalable tool for sustainable soil protection in arid, high-altitude regions.
Similar content being viewed by others
Heavy metals impact environmental capacity of oasis soils in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau dry zone
Spatial distribution characteristics of soil heavy metals in Sabao Chaqu watershed of Tuotuo river, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau based on geographic detector
Application of machine learning in soil heavy metals pollution assessment in the southeastern Tibetan plateau
Funding
This work was supported by the Provincial Geological Exploration Special Funds Project in Qinghai Province (Number: 2024524032ky006).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Supplementary Material 1 (download DOCX )
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ma, Y., Niu, Y., Bai, Y. et al. Determination of background concentrations and risk-screening values for elements in oasis soils in the arid zone of the Tibetan Plateau using multifractal models.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-57692-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-57692-y
Keywords
- Oasis in arid zones
- Multifractals
- Tibetan Plateau
- Fractal dimension analysis
Source: Ecology - nature.com
