Urban areas are the hot-spots of soil pollution, as a result of increase in urban populations, vehicular transport increase and industrial growth. Due to the rapid growth of urbanization, urban soil contamination by potentially toxic trace elements (PTEs) has become one of the major public health and environmental concern. This research assessed PTEs (As, Cd, Pb, Cr, Cu, Co, Mn, Zn, and Ni) concentrations in urban soils from the Kermanshah urban areas in western Iran. Thirty soil samples were collected from residential urban parks, as from depth of 0––20 cm. Concentrations of PTEs in the soil were determined by ICP-OES. Multivariate analysis method was applied to distinguish the anthropogenic and natural sources of PTEs. Also geostatistics and geographical information system (GIS) were applied to produce spatial distribution patterns. The contamination degree of PTEs was assessed on the basis of geoaccumulation index (Igeo), the Enrichment factor (EF), single pollution index (Pi) and Nemerow pollution index (PINemerow). Applying principal component analysis (PCA), three components were extracted. The first principal component with a high loading for Mn, Co, Cd, Cu, and As, the second principal component, with high contribution of Cr, Ni and Pb and the third component having strong loadings of Zn. Mn, Co, Cd, Cu, and As may be defined as an anthropogenic, Cr, Ni and Pb reflect the contribution of natural and anthropogenic sources and Zn was mostly controlled by natural sources. The results of Pi were consistent with PCA. Spatial distributions showed that that the higher Pb concentration was concentrated mostly in the central and south parts of the city and higher Cd in the east parts of the study area. The map of As indicated maximum concentration in the north and west parts of the study area. Similar trends of spatial distributions between Cu and Zn, between Cr, Ni, and between Co and Mn were observed. The metal concentrations indicated that the Kermanshah city is t
