ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Copula-Based Spatial Model and Identification
of Extremal Regions of Soil Heavy Metal
Concentrations in a Mine Consolidation Area
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1
BGRIMM Technology Group, Beijing 100160, China
2
Chinese Academy of Natural Resources Economics, Beijing 101149, China
3
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
Submission date: 2024-04-26
Final revision date: 2024-06-17
Acceptance date: 2024-09-04
Online publication date: 2025-01-07
Corresponding author
Qiong Wang
BGRIMM Technology Group, Beijing 100160, China
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ABSTRACT
The specification of environmental extrema is a persisting problem, especially in soil with spatial
heterogeneity owing to anthropogenic activities. Using a geographic detector, a Bayesian spatial model,
and a copula-based spatial model, methods of identification of extremal regions in a mine area were
compared. The results are as follows. (1) All of the heavy metals in anthropogenic soil, including As, Cd,
Cr, Hg, and Ni, had a weak random spatial heterogeneity, but Cd and As exhibited strong stratification
spatial heterogeneity (q = 0.21** a nd 0 .11*, respectively). (2) The Cr, Hg, and Ni predictions are very
similar for both models (the improvements in the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and R2 are
5.88% at most and 3.29%, respectively). The copula-based spatial model outperformed the Gaussian
spatial model in the predictions of Cd (MAPE: 12.12%; R2: 16.67%) and As (MAPE: 4.16%; R2: 7.89%).
(3) Based on the comparison with the Gaussian spatial model using a Bayesian process, the identification
of the extremal regions using the copula-based spatial model had a higher accuracy for the extreme
samples. In general, the prediction obtained using the copula-based model revealed the probability
of exceeding a certain threshold at a location. Moreover, it uses the copulas fitting of the samples’ spatial
heterogeneity obtained through maximum likelihood estimation, rather than variogram fitting, resulting
in the random spatial heterogeneity summing to a nugget, which preserves more information about
the samples. Thus, we conclude that the copula-based spatial model can be used to predict the heavy
metal concentrations in soil with weak random spatial heterogeneity but strong stratification spatial
heterogeneity.