Facilitated transport in European soils from the Euro‐soil project

Abstract

AbstractWe studied the response of five reference soils from the European Union (a vertic cambisol, rendzina, dystric cambisol, orthic luvisol, and orthic podzol, also known as Euro‐soils 1 to 5) to the addition of HCl and NaOH. For all soils, which were incubated as soil slurries, the amount of organic carbon in solution remained essentially constant upon addition of HCl but increased upon addition of NaOH; that is, it was not the pH of the soil that determined changes in the solubilization of dissolved organic carbon but ΔpH. This observation has implications for the design of active soil management strategies, because increased amounts of dissolved organic carbon in the soil solution pose a risk for leaching of contaminants to deeper soil layers and eventually to the groundwater. In the past, much attention has been paid to the reaction of soils to acidification and changing land use as practiced when agricultural land is taken out of production. The observations reported here indicate that soil alkalization is not necessarily without environmental and toxicological risks.