Urban Soil Lead Variability at the City and Neighbourhood Scale: Evidence From Glasgow to Guide Contaminant Mapping

Abstract

Legacy lead (Pb) contamination in urban soils remains a public health concern, particularly for children. While numerous studies have identified factors influencing the spatial distribution of soil Pb, few have systematically evaluated how these relationships vary across geographical scales. This study explores scale‐dependent drivers of urban Pb contamination and demonstrates these by analysing three datasets from Glasgow, UK: one at the city scale and two at a neighbourhood scale. At the city scale in Glasgow, soil Pb concentrations were most strongly associated with soil organic matter (SOM) content, historic industry density and building age. In contrast, neighbourhood‐scale analyses revealed that land use, distance from roads and distance from buildings became more influential, highlighting how scale shapes which factors dominate Pb distribution. The role of SOM was consistent across scales, suggesting a strong geochemical control on Pb retention, while other relationships were modulated by local legacy effects such as reworked soils and buried waste. These findings demonstrate that future predictive models of soil Pb must account for spatial scale when selecting explanatory variables. More broadly, our results emphasise the need for scale‐aware covariate selection for improving contaminant mapping methodologies within diverse urban environments. Furthermore, this study highlights the need to consider how geochemical and historical anthropogenic processes may still govern the local patterns of soil Pb pollution within many industrial and post‐industrial cities worldwide.