Soil is built of a dynamic and hierarchically organized system of various organic and inorganic constituents and organisms, the spatial structure of which defines a large, complex and heterogeneous biogeochemical interface. Although soil-interface research is one of the most rapidly growing and competitive fields of soil science, in particular the interplay and the interdependencies of the multitude of biochemical and biophysical processes have yet to be unravelled. This, however, requires following new avenues of integration of soil physical, chemical and biological disciplines and demands the application and development of emerging characterisation and probing techniques adopted from the fields of molecular biology, analytical and computational chemistry, as well as material and nano-sciences.
Topics of this session are studies on structure, dynamics and architecture of biogeochemical interfaces and on the fate of contaminants reacting with these interfaces.