Physicochemical Analysis of Soil around Dimension Stone Quarry and Processing Plants in Selected Companies in South West and North Central

Abstract

This study examined the physicochemical properties of soil collected around processing plant of SUTOL Crush Rock industries, Supare and OFL Winstone quarry, Lokoja. A total of sixty eight soil samples were collected for a period of three seasons between 2020 August and 2021 June. Samples were collected at depths of 0-10cm, 10-20cm and 20-30cm from each sampling point. pH, N, P, EC, TOC and CEC were determined from the experimental analysis. The result obtained indicates that most of the soil samples were acidic (pH with range 3.72-6.09), Nitrogen ranges from 0.10-0.46%; phosphorus 3.28-6.33%, EC with 13.32-55.12µS/CM, TOC with 1.36-3.06% and CEC with 7.49-22.52CMol. The samples were acidic and season one samples had capacity to hold cations while seasons two and three had moderately low CEC which may not retain much water. It is recommended that further research should be put in place to ascertain the claim of the cations retention capacity of the soil.