Soil chemistry has evolved from an agronomic focus to be broadly shared in a number of disciplines has greatly enlarged the body of soil chemistry practitioners. Soil solution chemistry has gained particular emphasis in this regard as a predictive and diagnostic approach for elucidating bioavailability, mobility, and geochemical cycling of chemicals in soil. Applying soil solution chemistry to problem solving in agronomy, environmental science, and geochemistry increasingly interests students, researchers, and consultants concerned with chemical retention and reactivity in soil environments.
Considerable research contributions to soil solution chemistry, especially relating to soil environmental chemistry, have occurred in the past decade. Reducing this body of research to practice will assure continued growth of soil solution chemistry as a powerful tool for monitoring, assessing, and interpreting chemical processes occurring in soil environments. This book --devoted to the theory, method, and application of soil solution chemistry --was written with this objective in mind.
Although earlier texts -- most notably, those of Sposito and Lindsay and the compilation of literature editied by Elprince -- have addressed theory of soil solution chemistry, no textbook or reference has addressed both the applied theory and methodology of soil solution chemistry. Soil Solution Chemistry: Applications to Environmental Science and Agriculture updates the field of soil solution chemistry with an emphasis on applied problem solving. The book is comprised of 14 chapters in four sections overviewing soil solution chemistry (Chapters 1 and 2), outlining theory and methodology (Chapters 3 to 6), addressing general applications (Chapters 7 to 10), and discussing specific applications (Chapters 11 to 14) of broad interest to environmental scientists and agronomists. Special emphasis is given to environmental science, as this is where the greatest potential for future application of soil solution chemistry will occur.
In writing this text, I have drawn on experiences gained in instruction and
advising of students attempting to apply soil solution chemistry to the
resolution of problems relating to chemical fate and behavior in soils.
Traditional texts in soil chemistry take an inside out look at topics such as
bioavailability, mobility, and geochemical cycling by emphasizing the soil solid
phase and the implications of solid-solution phase relationships to
environmental availability of chemicals. Since the environmental availability of
chemicals relates mostly to the occurrence and distribution of chemicals in the
soil aqueous phase (soil solution), I take the approach in this text of
emphasizing the direct analysis and interpretation of soil solution phase
composition in order to gain insights as to chemical reactivity and availability
in soil systems. This very different focus will be useful to soil chemistry
educators in advanced courses seeking alternative ways to discuss soil
chemistry. Additionally, educators in allied disciplines (environmental science,
chemical and environmental engineering, geochemistry, ecology) desiring a
textbook for teaching soil environmental chemistry may find this approach more
useful in their particular areas of disciplinary expertise than more traditional
soil chemistry textbooks.