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Soil Pollution, Soil Ecology and Sustainable Land Use

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Soil Conservation and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2025 | Viewed by 672

Special Issue Editors

Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA
Interests: environmental soil chemistry; soil carbon sequestration; nutrient cycling; mineral-water interface; contaminants
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Interests: mineralogy; geochemistry; solid-state chemistry; material chemistry; physical chemistry

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Soil health is facing ecological degradation due to natural and anthropogenic activities, such as sea-level rise, soil salinization, drought/flooding, soil contamination, excessive fertilization, invasive species, and pesticide application. Biogeochemical processes and interactions in soils are essential in regulating the fate and transport of nutrients and pollutants. These processes strongly affect the safety and sustainability of soil ecosystems, which are critically important to ensure global agricultural ecology and environmental safety.

This Special Issue aims to highlight research efforts, on multiple scales, into biogeochemical processes that regulate the fate and transport of nutrients and pollutants in soil ecosystems. In this Special Issue, original research articles, short communications, and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following: enhancing soil health and sustainability, controlling inorganic and organic pollutants in soils, colloid-facilitated transport, biogeochemical cycling of nutrients, enhancing soil carbon sequestration, preventing nutrient loss from soils, preventing degradation of soils, conserving ecological biodiversity, and modeling of large-scale cycles.

Dr. Hui Li
Dr. Hui Yin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • soil health
  • nutrient cycling
  • soil pollutants
  • ecological conservation
  • large-scale modelling

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

17 pages, 1521 KiB  
Article
Investigating the Interactive Effect of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and Different Chelating Agents (EDTA and DTPA) with Different Plant Species on Phytoremediation of Contaminated Soil
by Saud S. Aloud, Khaled D. Alotaibi, Khalid F. Almutairi, Fahad N. Albarakah, Fahad Alotaibi and Ibrahim A. Ahmed
Sustainability 2024, 16(20), 8820; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16208820 (registering DOI) - 11 Oct 2024
Viewed by 464
Abstract
Heavy metal (HM) contamination in soil poses a severe environmental threat, jeopardizing ecosystem health and potentially entering the food chain through plant uptake. Phytoremediation, a bioremediation technique utilizing plants to remove or immobilize contaminants, offers a sustainable and eco-friendly solution for HM remediation. [...] Read more.
Heavy metal (HM) contamination in soil poses a severe environmental threat, jeopardizing ecosystem health and potentially entering the food chain through plant uptake. Phytoremediation, a bioremediation technique utilizing plants to remove or immobilize contaminants, offers a sustainable and eco-friendly solution for HM remediation. This study investigated the interactive effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and chelating agents (EDTA and DTPA) on the growth of maize (Zea mays L.) and alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) cultivated in metal-contaminated soil and their impact on HM uptake by these plants. The findings revealed that AMF and chelating agents have complex interactive effects on plant growth and metal accumulation. Maize (Zea mays L.) shoot dry matter increased with AMF and chelating agents at lower concentrations. Both plants generally showed a significant (p ≤ 0.05) increase in shoot dry matter with amendments, with AMF × EDTA (10 mmol/kg) being the most effective for alfalfa. DTPA and EDTA generally reduced the DTPA-extractable metals in soil, suggesting potential for metal removal. However, the effects of AMF on metal availability were variable. Metal concentrations in maize (Zea mays L.) shoots increased with increasing DTPA and EDTA concentrations, while the effects of AMF were more complex. The alfalfa shoot metal content showed varied responses, with EDTA (5 mmol/kg) effectively reducing the metal uptake. In general, treatments involving chelating agents (DTPA and EDTA) tend to result in higher bioaccumulation factor (BF) values compared to the non-treated controls for most HMs in both plant species. Mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) treatment alone or in combination with chelating agents also showed that varied effects on HM uptake in both the alfalfa and maize treatments with chelating agents, especially at higher concentrations, generally promoted the greater translocation of HMs in both plant species. Both alfalfa and maize responded differently to treatments, with some treatments showing higher translocation factor (TF) values for certain HMs in one species compared to the other. Mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) treatment alone or in combination with chelating agents also showed varied effects on HM uptake and translocation in both alfalfa and maize. Further research is required to optimize remediation strategies that balance plant health and metal mobilization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Pollution, Soil Ecology and Sustainable Land Use)
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