properties of soils played an important role in the accumulation of most potentially hazardous metals in the rice grain. Moran's I combined with geostatistics proved to be an effective way to describe the spatial pattern of potentially hazardous metals in paddy soils. Kriging maps of metal concentration indicated that many areas in Shengzhou were polluted by potentially hazardous metals and pollution hotspots were mostly distributed in the center of the study area. As a result, environmental measures should be taken to control soil pollution and to curtail metal contamination of the food chain.