Abundance of rare earth elements in rice paddy soils from three regions of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Very few studies deal with the rare earth element (REE) content within paddy soil systems. This paper presents, for the first time, the distribution of REEs in paddy soils from three different regions in Sri Lanka. Seventy samples from the Kalutara and Kandy regions located in the Wet Zone and Anuradhapura region in the Dry Zone were selected for this study. ICP-MS measurements were performed on the soil samples to determine their respective REE concentrations. The sum content of all the REEs (SREE) in these three regions were 182, 186 and 132 mg/g, respectively. The mean concentrations for the 70 soil samples in g/g were 350.23 (Lu). The chondrite-normalized REE patterns of the paddy soils from the three study areas were similar, which may be a reflection of comparable parent materials. Kalutara soils, which are richer in organic matter and kaolinite, showed a higher lighter REE content and lower heavy REE content with a more pronounced negative Eu anomaly with respect to the other regions. Whilst this may be a result of subtle differences in soil parent materials, it could also reflect secondary processes related to clay mineral and organic matter adsorption of REEs in paddy soils

Rare earth elements and relation between their potential bioavailability and soil properties, Nidda catchment (Central Germany)

“…Diatloff et al 1996;Pang et al 2002;Chandrajith et al 2008;Tyler 2004;Liang et al 2005) and mainly from China. A review-article by Hu et al (2006) elucidated that the soil inventory of REEs outside China is a future research need.…”