A bivariate spatial extreme mixture model for unreplicated heavy metal soil contamination

Abstract: Geostatistical models for multivariate applications such as heavy metal soil contamination work under Gaussian assumptions and may result in underestimated extreme values and misleading risk assessments (Marchant et al, 2011). A more suitable framework to analyse extreme values is extreme value theory (EVT). However, EVT relies on replications in time, which are generally not available in geochemical datasets. Therefore, using EVT to map soil contamination requires adaptation to be used in the usual single-replicate data framework of soil surveys. We propose a bivariate spatial extreme mixture model to model the body and tail of contaminant pairs, where the tails are described using a stationary generalised Pareto distribution. We demonstrate the performance of our model using a simulation study and through modelling bivariate soil contamination in the Glasgow conurbation. Model results are given as maps of predicted marginal concentrations and probabilities of joint exceedance of soil guideline values. Marginal concentration maps show areas of elevated lead levels along the Clyde River and elevated levels of chromium around the south and southeast villages such as East Kilbride and Wishaw. The joint probability maps show higher probabilities of joint exceedance to the south and southeast of the city centre, following known legacy contamination regions in the Clyde River basin.