The quality of the urban ecosystem depends on the green space soil quality. This approach is also crucial for filling the sampling strategy gap. The optimization approach allows a soil pollution map to be generated without deleting or adding additional monitoring points.

The higher concentration of PTE compared to background values indicates a soil pollution issue in the study area. The optimization approach resulted in an increased prediction accuracy (22.4% higher) for non-sampled locations compared to the initial sampling design. Pb, Cu, and Zn levels were 1.45, 1.20, and 1.56 times the background value of Shanghai, respectively, and 1.57, 1.66, 1.91 times the background values in China, respectively. However, all measured values exceeded the reference values for China. Compared to Shanghai’s background values, the five PTE mean concentrations are much higher, except for Cd and Cr. The prediction of PTE in soil was undertaken using a geostatistical and spatial simulated annealing algorithm.

The concentrations of five PTEs (Pb, Cd, Cr, Cu, and Zn) were compared with reference values for Shanghai and China.

Therefore, determining the concentration levels of PTE and improving their prediction accuracy by sampling optimization strategy is necessary for making sustainable environmental decisions. High concentrations of potentially toxic elements (PTE) create global environmental stress due to the crucial threat of their impacts on the environment and human health.

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