Content area
Full text
Understanding the molecular-scale complexities and interplay of chemical and biological processes of contaminants at solid, liquid, and gas interfaces is a fundamental and crucial element to enhance our understanding of anthropogenic environmental impacts. The ability to describe the complexity of environmental biogeochemical reaction mechanisms relies on our analytical ability through the application and developmemnt of advanced spectroscopic techniques. Accompanying this introductory article are nine papers that either review advanced in situ spectroscopic methods or present original research utilizing these techniques. This collection of articles summarizes the challenges facing environmental biogeochemistry, highlights the recent advances and scientific gaps, and provides an outlook into future research that may benefit from the use of in situ spectroscopic approaches. The use of synchrotron-based techniques and other methods are discussed in detail, as is the importance to integrate multiple analytical approaches to confirm results of complementary procedures or to fill data gaps. We also argue that future direction in research will be driven, in addition to recent analytical developments, by emerging factors such as the need for risk assessment of new materials (i.e., nanotechnologies) and the realization that biogeochemical processes need to be investigated in situ under environmentally relevant conditions.
Abbreviations: AAS, atomic absorption spectrometry; DNT, dinitrotoluene; EDX, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy; EXAFS, extended X-ray absorption fine structure; IR, infrared; NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance; QEM-SEM, quantitative evaluation of mineralogy by scanning electron microscopy; SEM, scanning electron microscopy; SR, synchrotron radiation; XANES, X-ray absorption near edge structure; XAS, X-ray absorption spectroscopy.
Environmental Biogeochemistry: The Analytical Challenge
Modern-day environmental biogeochemistry is an extremely dynamic, diverse, and challenging area of research that brings together a variety of expertise ranging from mineralogy to microbiology and from analytical chemistry to molecular biology. This spectrum of expertise reflects the complex nature of the subject, wherein the interaction between biotic and abiotic processes creates highly heterogeneous and dynamic systems. As such, environmental biogeochemistry is a challenging field that requires a number of experimental and scientific approaches. For instance, global cycling of nutrients and contaminants often focus on demanding modeling processes while relying on the understanding of fundamental mechanisms driving these cycles at the microscale. Advanced spectroscopic techniques play an essential role in enhancing this fundamental understanding.
A number of techniques currently in use in this field...