The role of synchrotron radiation in advancing the frontiers of water- rock interactions

This overview paper discusses the important role that synchrotron-based techniques play in addressing frontiers in water-rock interactions. Over the past decade, with the advent of cutting-edge molecular scale in-situ analytical techniques, significant advances have occurred in determining the speciation and sorption/release mechanisms of metals, oxyanions, and other contaminants in soil and water environments. These frontiers in molecular environmental science have major impacts on remediation efforts, development of predictive models, and bioavailability assessments. This paper will emphasize the use of synchrotron-based techniques, including micro-focused x-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) and x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopies and micro-tomography to speciate and determine associations of metal(loid)s in soils and plants, and real-time Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to investigate microbially mediated transformations of contaminants.