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Updated: Aug 17, 2026

Clean Sampling and Analysis of River and Estuarine Waters for Trace Metal Studies
Published on: July 1, 2016
Adaptive sampling based on the cumulative distribution function of order statistics to delineate heavy-metal
Kai-Wei Juang1, Dar-Yuan Lee, Yun-Lung Teng
1Department of Post-Modern Agriculture, MingDao University, Pitou, Changhua, Taiwan.
Abstract:
Correctly classifying "contaminated" areas in soils, based on the threshold for a contaminated site, is important for determining effective clean-up actions. Pollutant mapping by means of kriging is increasingly being used for the delineation of contaminated soils. However, those areas where the kriged pollutant concentrations are close to the threshold have a high possibility for being misclassified. In order to reduce the misclassification due to the over- or under-estimation from kriging, an adaptive sampling using the cumulative distribution function of order statistics (CDFOS) was developed to draw additional samples for delineating contaminated soils, while kriging. A heavy-metal contaminated site in Hsinchu, Taiwan was used to illustrate this approach. The results showed that compared with random sampling, adaptive sampling using CDFOS reduced the kriging estimation errors and misclassification rates, and thus would appear to be a better choice than random sampling, as additional sampling is required for delineating the "contaminated" areas.
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