The Soil and Environmental Biogeophysics Lab focuses on the analysis and prediction of transport and fate of chemical species that are of importance to the functioning, quality and remediation of soils, surface sediments and water. More specifically, our research aims at a mechanistic understanding and quantitative characterization of microbial processes and their impact on the mobility, bioavailability and distribution of nutrients, metals and contaminants. As a consequence, our research is strongly multidisciplinary, standing at the interface between soil microbiology, soil geochemistry and soil physics and explores the coupled geochemical, biological and transport processes in soils and surface sediments.

Our approach combines (i) field measurements, (ii) laboratory experiments that focus on the mechanisms, kinetics and equilibrium states of individual biogeochemical processes, and (iii) reactive transport modeling that ultimately allows predicting the response of a natural system to changing conditions.