The paper deals with investigating the impact of heavy metals on biotic processes in the soils of the urban ecosystem of the city of Rivne. The territories of the northern part of the city, where the main industrial enterprises are concentrated, and the southern part of the city, with a significant impact of fugitive emissions from the railway and road transport, are characterized by the highest level of soil contamination. The soils are assigned to class III of hazard of contamination with heavy metals with "medium impact level" on biological processes, soil contamination category is "hazardous". The western and central parts of the city are marked by a significant level of contamination, the soils belong to class IV of hazard with "moderate impact level" on biological processes, the soil contamination category is "moderately hazardous". The eastern part of the city is the least contaminated and is assigned to class V of hazard. The contamination level is "low", the soil contamination category is "permissible".

The paper analyzes the problem of soil cover contamination of the urban ecosystem with heavy metals. The work is based on the authors own long-term monitoring studies. The main sources of soil contamination are identified -industrial enterprises and motor transport. The content of total and mobile forms of Cu, Ni, Pb, Cr, and Zn in the soils of the city territory was found out. The concentration factors (C f ) of heavy metals and their total contamination indexes (TCI) were determined. The highest C f values for the total form of heavy metals belong to zinc (up to 25.1). At 61.1% of the study sites, the C f values of zinc are above 9.0. At 83.3% of the sites, the C f values for the total form of copper content are in the range of 6.0-22.1. The results of the studies indicate high average C f values for lead and chromium at the majority of the sites. The highest maximum and average C f values for the mobile form for all heavy metals were found at test-site No. 4. As a result of the studies, it was found that the average values of the total contamination indexes for the total form of heavy metals exceed the permissible level by 1.6-2.7 times. For the mobile form of heavy metals, the average values of the TCI are within the permissible limits, except for test-site No.4, where an excess of 3.7 times is recorded. It is found that the soils of the northern and southern parts of the city are the most contaminated, the least contaminated are soils of the eastern part of the city.