Sustainable Remediation of Soil and Water Contaminant: Innovations and Practices

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid development of modern agriculture and industry and intense anthropogenic activities over the past several decades have directly and indirectly caused the immense generation and release of a wide spectrum of heavy metals, organic or inorganic pollutants, radioactive substances, eutrophic elements, newborn pathogens, and viruses into the environment. And there is concern about the conventional and newly emerging contaminants due to the great hazards and risks they place on ecological systems and human health. To reduce environmental contaminants, critical legislations and a series of action plans for environmental protection are legally enacted by many countries. Moreover, a number of techniques, methodologies, and strategies have been or are being developed at the same time to support pollution administration and remediation. In association with the atmospheric phase, water and soil entities often serve as the major reservoir of most of the contaminants in our terrestrial ecosystems. In consideration of higher contamination levels and severe situations in the typical areas of soil and water, contamination remediation is of uttermost importance for the restoration of ecological balance. We hope that this Special Issue, titled “Sustainable Remediation of Soil and Water Contaminant: Innovations and Practices”, will serve as an international forum that exclusively facilitates the innovations and practices of remediation methods and the improvement in remediation efficacy and sustainability. This Special Issue aims to publish innovative works focusing on the research and development of catalytically degrading materials and the pilot application of novel techniques, e.g., advanced oxidation–reduction, physical desorption, immobilization, phytoremediation, microbial degradation, in situ biological process, recycle/reuse, and engineering terms for the removal of contaminants in soil and water. We aim to publish experimental and theoretical studies on remediation mechanisms and environmental risk assessment in association with the service for sustainable remediation, e.g., the bioavailability, toxicological profiles, and concentration–response relationships of new contaminants in aquatic and terrestrial systems, and conceptual models and studies focusing on the basic principles or frameworks established for remediation sustainability are also welcome. However, the report only focuses on environmental concentration and monitoring measures, laboratory studies that are lacking in innovation and novelty in pollution remediation, or issues specifically linked to atmospheric pollution that are not temporarily considered in this Special Issue.

The submission of full-length research papers, original reviews, short communications, or novel perspectives on the methods, principles, and mechanistic insights for sustainable remediation and the environmental risks of new contaminants in soil and water are all welcome and would be accepted efficiently in the short period after the critical peer-review process, given that the manuscripts offer interesting results and have not been published previously or under the consideration of other publishers.

The topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Environmental hazards of new contaminants in soil and water;
• Bioavailability and biological effect;
• Concentration-response relationships;
• Models developed for risk assessment;
• Novel development of remediation methods and materials;
• Degradation or biotransformation mechanism of contaminants;
• Practice of physical/chemical/microbial/phytoremediation;
• Models and framework for evaluation of remediation sustainability. 

Dr. Chenggang Gu
Dr. Huan He
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• new contaminants
• soil
• water
• innovative remediation techniques
• remediation materials
• underlying mechanism for degradation and biotransformation
• remediation sustainability
• bioavailability
• toxicity
• risk assessment model