Soil & Environmental Chemistry
The Soil and Environmental Chemistry research program involves laboratory and field experiments on agricultural soils, contaminated urban soils, and mine-impacted soils/geomaterials in order to understand biogeochemical transformation of nutrient and potentially toxic elements and their role in controlling soil-plant transfer, mobility, and attenuation processes.
The goal of the program is to enhance soil quality, and to better understand the mechanisms and interactions involved in soil chemical reactions.
Primary focus areas presently include:
- Determining reaction products of different P fertilizer sources in soils to understand their relationship to potential availability and plant uptake. The objective is to aid in the design of better and more efficient P fertilizers and P management practices
- Evaluating the impacts of contaminants on food safety from urban gardens and other types of local farming activities on brownfield sites
- “In situ” soil remediation involving the formation of stable solid phases, chemisorption, and phytostabilization to reduce soil-plant transfer of potentially toxic elements and/or reduce transportation of contaminated soils by air and water
- Understanding complex redox transformations of potentially toxic trace elements and interactions between molecular level and macro-scale biotic and abiotic processes on the health of our soil/geo environments and water bodies