Translocation and Total Soil Metal Load: (Sampling) Twenty-two sampling sites were selected within the dominant assemblages: two sites from the SOF, four each within the CRM and the MS communities, and twelve within the SNH. Triplicate soil, leaf, stem and root tissue was collected at each site. (Metal Translocation) While metal translocation differed considerably among the dominant plant species, there were some recognizable trends. Results indicate that As is the most stable of the metals studied, exhibiting little translocation into the plant tissue. Cr exhibited a trend similar to As, with slightly higher rates of accumulation in the root tissue of all four dominant species. . B. populifolia, P. deltoides, A. vulgaris and R. copallinum all bioaccumulated significant concentrations of Cu and Pb in the root tissue and Zn in the leaf tissue. Also, soil and root Cr had a strong linear correlation in both B. populifolia (N = 8, r2 = 0.99, p < 0.01) and R. copallinum (N = 5, r2 = 0.62, p < 0.05). No other statistically significant relationships between soil and root metal concentration were observed. Extremely high concentrations of Zn were observed in leaf tissue of P. deltoides and B. populifolia.. In several cases, the bioaccumulation of Zn in these leaf samples exceeded soil concentrations by orders of magnitude. (Soil Metal Load) To estimate distributions of soil metals, the individual soil data were kriged. The considerable standard deviation for each metal data set was accounted for by using block kriging, which estimates the average value of the rectangular blocks centered on the grid nodes (Stein, 1999). Since all the metal data were highly skewed, data was transformed before performing kriging. In order to normalize the data distribution and provide more stable variograms, we selected logarithmic and rank order transformations. (Metal Speciation) It is generally accepted that plant growth and metal uptake are related to free ion Figure 4: activities (McBride, 1994). In several experiments conducted using soil or nutrient solution, the free ion model was able to predict metal uptake by plants (Pavan et al., 1982; Bell et al., 1991). However, it has also been shown that free metal ion concentration is a function of soil acidity, organic content, and total metal loading (Sauve et al., 1997). Therefore, total metal concentration can provide useful information concerning plant uptake. In addition, free copper ion concentration was shown (Knight et al., 1998) to correlate well with total copper concentration regardless of pH. Many plants are able to reduce metal ions in vicinity of their roots by changes in pH within the rhizosphere, or by exudation of reducing substances (Watsel, et al.,1991).