Study of urban puddle sediments for understanding heavy metal pollution in an urban environment

•Puddle sediments are attractive urban objects to use in an environmental study.•Urban puddle sediments accumulate pollution over space and time.•Puddle sediments are collected in the residential blocks directly.•Concentrations of Pb and Zn in puddle sediments reveal urban pollution.

Natural processes cause sedimentation in local surface depressed zones of the urban landscape with the formation of micro water bodies (puddles). The urban puddle sediments can be defined as a separate peculiar subtype of geochemical traps of the recent technogenic and anthropogenic sediments. Accumulation of pollutants over space and time is a remarkable advantage of urban sediments in comparison with urban soils. The relevance of urban puddle sediments as an object for the assessment of heavy metals pollution (Pb, Zn, Cu, Ni, Co, Mn, Fe) of an urban ecosystem was studied on the example of Ekaterinburg city, Russia. Samples of urban puddle sediments were collected from 213 locations in residential areas. The study of heavy metals pollution in Ekaterinburg city showed that the puddle sediments provide further opportunities for the analysis of the urban environment.