Soil and Water Contamination

Soil and Water Contamination, Second Edition gives a structured overview of transport and fate processes of environmental contaminants. Dealing with all topics essential for understanding and predicting contaminant patterns in soil, groundwater and surface water, it contributes to the formation of a solid basis for adequate soil and water pollution control and integrated catchment management. A unique feature of this work is that it does not treat water and soil pollution as independent processes, but as components of an integrated whole. The core of this geoscientific approach is divided into four parts:
• Introduction to the basics of soil and water contamination, such as the fundamentals of environmental pollution and chemistry and the basic properties of soil, groundwater and surface water.
• Source, role, and behaviour of substances in soil and water, treating natural and anthropogenic sources of nutrients, heavy metals, radionuclides and organic pollutants as well as emerging substances of concern, their physico-chemical characteristics, behaviour, and toxicity.
• Transport and fate of substances in soil and water, focusing on processes of transport, exchange and transformations like advection, dispersion, adsorption kinetics and biochemical decay. Special attention is paid to the mathematical description and modelling of these processes.
• Patterns of substances in soil and water, explaining spatial and temporal patterns of pollutants in soil, groundwater, and surface water, illustrated by recent case studies from fundamental and applied research.

This comprehensive, successful textbook, now in its second edition, has been conscientiously updated and extended and includes many case studies, examples and exercises sections, providing undergraduate and graduate students in the Earth and Environmental Sciences with all the material necessary for the study of soil and water contamination. In addition, it can serve as a useful source of information for professionals.

Marcel van der Perk is Assistant Professor of Physical Geography at Utrecht University, where he specialises in soil and water quality issues and spatio-temporal environmental modelling. He teaches courses on soil and water pollution and geographical information systems. His research focuses on measurement, analysis, and modelling of transport and fate of dissolved and sediment-associated contaminants (nutrients, heavy metals, and radionuclides) in soil and water from field to river basin scales.