Fundamental Research on Geochemical Processes for the Development of Resilient and Sustainable Geosystems

Fundamental understanding and control of geochemical processes in soils/rock and groundwater are vital for rational design of new and innovative resilient and sustainable geosystems. Geochemical processes such as adsorption-desorption, ion-exchange, oxidation-reduction, precipitation-dissolution, complexation, acid-base reactions, volatilization, and biodegradation processes are generally interrelated and are highly dependent on the soil/rock and pore-water characteristics such as mineralogy, oxides/carbonate content, organic carbon content, pH, solution chemistry, temperature, among others. Moreover, the geochemical processes in engineered systems can be transient and reversible, drastically impacting the performance of geosystems under different anthropogenic and natural perturbations that could occur over their design life. Non-invasive, less energy-intensive, and less resource intensive strategies and technologies are increasingly being sought for rehabilitation and/or development of sustainable geosystems. Harnessing natural biological processes has been emphasized recently toward sustainable geoengineering such as bio-cementation, bioremediation, phytoremediation, among others. However, an in-depth understanding of the fundamental dynamic geochemical processes in all such cases has been lacking, and the current research should embrace and encourage such fundamental research.