Transport & Fate of Chemicals in Soils

Book excerpt: During the last four decades, tremendous advances have been made towards the understanding of transport characteristics of contaminants in soils, solutes, and tracers in geological media. Transport & Fate of Chemicals in Soils: Principles & Applications offers a comprehensive treatment of the subject complete with supporting examples of mathematical models that describe contaminants reactivity and transport in soils and aquifers. This approach makes it a practical guide for designing experiments and collecting data that focus on characterizing retention as well as release kinetic reactions in soils and contaminant transport experiments in the laboratory, greenhouse), and in the field. The book provides the basic framework of the principals governing the sorption and transport of chemicalsin soils. It focuses on physical processes such as fractured media, multiregion, multiple porosities, and heterogeneity and effect of scale as well as chemical processes such as nonlinear kinetics, release and desorption hysteresis, multisite and multireaction reactions, and competitive-type reactions. The coverage also includes details of sorption behavior of chemicals with soil matrix surfaces as well the integration of sorption characteristics with mechanisms that govern solute transport in soils. The discussions of applications of the principles of sorption and transport are not restricted to contaminants, but also include nitrogen, phosphorus, and trace elements including essential micronutrients, heavy metals, military explosives, pesticides, and radionuclides. Written in a very clear and easy-to-follow language by a pioneer in soil science, this book details the basic framework of the physical and chemical processes governing the transport of contaminants, trace elements, and heavy metals in soils. Highly practical, it includes laboratory methods, examples, and empirical formulations. The approach taken by the author gives you not only the fundamentals of understanding of reactive chemicals retention and their transport in soils and aquifers, but practical guidance you can put to immediate use in designing experiments and collecting data.