Bright light, big opportunities: Synchrotron radiation for process understanding in soil systems
Soils are formed through complex biogeochemical reactions, often resulting in a highly heterogeneous assemblages of organic and mineral phases. The convoluted chemical processes and interactions occurring in soil systems have profound environmental and societal impacts (i.e. carbon sequestration and nutrient/pollutant dynamics). The understanding of soil systems requires structural and chemical insights across several length scales. This higher level of understanding of soils can be achieved by the use of synchrotron based analytical techniques. In this presentation I aim to expose how different synchrotron-based techniques can help us to understand the fate and changes in carbon and other elements. For this, I will expose on both bulk and high spatially-resolved techniques by summarizing three scientific cases. The first case aims to understand how plant nutrition can affect soil stabilized carbon at the root-soil interface. Here I used XRD and gas analysis gain insight on the changes in C stability and its association with different minerals in soils that were in contact with plants under different nutritional stress. The second case explores the use of XANES and optimized computational algorithms to understand the fate of nutrients (phosphorus and sulphur) in two different ecosystems. In the final case I will explore how the construction and use of a cryosample holder at SLS helped us explore how carbon and phosphorus interact at the root-soil interface. My final remarks will be on the potential of the ESRF-EBS to the geoscience community and how the use of innovative methods of correlative microscopy using synchrotron based cryospectroscopy can be of interest to users from diverse areas.
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