This graduate-level text and reference work is unique among the soil literature, dealing as it does with the interdisciplinary fields of soil pollution and remediation. It starts off with a thorough and comprehensible introduction to the relevant fundamentals of mineralogy, chemistry, and soil properties. Readers are thus well prepared to understand the biochemical aspects of soil remediation then presented. Mathematical modeling and soil monitoring are covered in a way that enables readers from various disciplines to acquire enough scientific literacy to facilitate further research. The book's holistic approach and narrative style are complemented by numerous and detailed illustrations. Soil Pollution is an asset not only to graduate students and instructors, but also to professionals from the environmental and agricultural sciences, as it provides an integrated overview of previously separately treated material.

Klappentext

Despite having been published about two years ago for the first time, the continuous demand for this book encouraged me to prepare this revised and enlarged edition. Many parts of the text have been rewritten, type errors traced and corrected, and the bibliography largely modified to include many of the references published about the subject of soil pollution in the previous ten years. I should like to express my thanks to the staff of Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, for their cooperative efforts in preparing this edition. I also would like to thank Mr. Michael Sidwell (B.A.) for the extreme but characteristic care with which he read and revised the proofs. I hope that, in this new edition, the book may continue to serve the needs of students and professionals alike interested in the subject of soil pollution. Ibrahim A. Mirsal Preface to the First Edition Whoever has enjoyed following the legendary duel between the Egyptian Pharaoh and his magicians (Alchemists) on one side, and Moses and his brother Aaron on the other, as is vividly narrated in the Bible, must have realised that people (at least those living at, or near the eternal battlefields of the Middle East) have always had knowledge about the terrible consequences of soil pollution by chemicals. This knowledge must have existed long before Moses and his Pharaoh. Nobody knows when people became aware of this, yet it must have been born in very early times, reaching back to the dawn of human conscious.

Inhalt

Soil - Its Nature and Origin.- The Origin of Soil.- Soil Constituents.- Soil Properties.- Soil Types and Classification.- Soil Degradation.- Soil Pollution.- Major Types of Soil Pollutants.- Sources of Soil Pollution.- Pollution Mechanisms and Soil-Pollutants Interaction.- Pollutants' Alteration, Transformation, and Initiation of Chemical Changes within the Soil.- Monitoring of Soil Pollution.- Monitoring and Monitoring Plans.- Biological Monitoring.- Modelling of Soil Pollution.- Models and Their Construction.- Soil Remediation.- Planning and Realisation of Soil Remediation.