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ERRATA

NMR in Environmental Science

During the past years, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has become a powerful tool for characterizing organic matter in environmental samples. Development of advanced NMR techniques and improvements in instrumental design have opened the door for the application of this technique to various additional research subjects such as soil physics and soil inorganic and organic chemistry. Recently, NMR techniques have been applied to the study of organic and inorganic pollutants in soil. Other applications using advanced NMR techniques are rarely considered in soil and environmental science. This arises because scientists skilled as NMR spectroscopists and scientists knowledgeable in specific environmental problems are seldom encouraged to interact.

The 2nd European Symposium "NMR in Soil Science" was held in Freising, Germany, 27 Feb.–1 Mar. 2000 to bring together researchers from both scientific worlds and to offer a platform for exchange and scientific communication. This meeting was considered as a follow up of the 1st European Symposium "NMR in Soil Science" organized by the Wageningen NMR Centre in 1996 (for the proceedings see Hemminga and Buurman, 1997). The high acceptance of this meeting underlined the necessity of such scientific exchange platforms and encouraged us to organize the symposium in Freising. This meeting was co-organized by the Lehrstuhl für Bodenkunde, Technische Universität München (Germany) and the Wageningen NMR Centre (Wageningen, the Netherlands). It was supported financially by the Wageningen NMR Centre, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and Bruker Analytik Messtechnik GmbH (Rheinstetten, Germany).

A total of 30 talks and 35 posters were presented at the 2nd European NMR Symposium, all of which clearly demonstrated the importance of NMR spectroscopy for advancing soil science and environmental research. This issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality provides a summary of 18 papers presented at this symposium.

Papers on the use of NMR spectroscopy for elucidating the structure of soil organic matter were presented by Preston and Trofymow, Lüdemann and Lankes, and Condron. These papers introduced the possibilities of ¹³C NMR, ¹⁵N NMR, and ³¹P NMR for the characterization of soil organic matter. Other contributions included in this issue of JEQ (see Cade-Menun et al., p. 457; Mahieu et al., p. 421; Lorenz and Preston, p. 431; Preston et al., p. 402; Turner and McKelvie, p. 466; McDowell et al., p. 450; Knicker et al., p. 444; and Dria et al., p. 393) presented how NMR can improve our understanding and ecological importance of organic matter formation in soil and sediments. Several presentations introduced promising advances in one-dimensional and two-dimensional NMR techniques, some of which are not yet routinely applied for the investigation of organic matter in soils and sediments (Simpson et al., p. 388; Hertkorn et al., p. 375). Several papers explored the application of NMR spectroscopy for investigating physical properties of soils. For example, the potential of NMR to examine the pore size distribution (Chen et al., p. 500), as well as water flow and transport processes in soil (Kinchesh et al., p. 494; Chen et al., p. 477; Herrmann et al., p. 506) were presented and are included in this issue. Contributions by Deurer et al. (p. 487) and Baumann et al. (p. 470) provided additional information showing support for this conclusion.

The application of NMR in environmental science is not limited to the characterization of soil organic matter or revealing the physical properties of soil. NMR techniques can provide information about the properties of heavy metal ions, as was shown by the contribution of Smernik and Oades (p. 414).

New advances in the application of NMR for examining bioremediation strategies and the efficiency of composting agricultural, industrial, and municipal waste were introduced. Although such studies are mostly performed by means of ¹³C NMR, Thiele et al. (p. 437) revealed the possibilities of ¹⁵N NMR spectroscopy by presenting data on the investigation of the transformation and binding of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene to humic material.

The full potential of NMR spectroscopy as a tool to study environmental quality problems is still to be realized. This is mainly due to the fact that, in general, environmental and soil science departments do not possess their own NMR equipment and consequently the access of senior soil scientists and soil science students to NMR instruments is limited. Beside theoretical expertise, knowledge of the operation of NMR spectrometers is essential to obtain the necessary skills to elucidate the possibilities, the advantages, but also the limitations of this tool. Rapid progress has been made in the use of NMR spectroscopy techniques during the past years, as demonstrated by the papers presented at the 2nd European NMR Symposium and reported in this issue of the journal. However, further work is needed to improve the theoretical and practical training in NMR spectroscopy of young environmental scientists so that they can take advantage of the full potential of this powerful method. These papers are one means to achieve this end.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Wageningen NMR Centre is gratefully acknowledged for dedicating the Symposium as a User Meeting of the European Community activity Large-Scale Facilities (ERBFMGECT950066). The editorial work of Dr. Yona Chen made it possible to put this set of papers together into one issue of the journal and is also gratefully acknowledged. To obtain further information related to the 2nd European NMR Symposium, contact Dr. Heike Knicker (knicker{at}wzw.tum.de) or Dr. Ingrid Koegel–Knabner (koegel{at}wzw.tum.de) at Lehrstuhl für Bodenkunde, Technische Universität München, Germany or Dr. Marcus A. Hemminga (http://ntmf.mf.wau.nl/hemminga/) at Wageningen NMR Centre, Wageningen, the Netherlands.

REFERENCES

• Hemminga, M.A., and P. Buurman (ed.) 1997. Special Issue "NMR in Soil Science." Geoderma 80:221–464.

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