Published 1992

4 Mineral Structure and Chemical

Reactivity in Soil

WHAT SOIL CHEMISTS DO

Chemists think of soils as multicomponent, open, biogeochemical

systems that contain solids, liquids, and gases. By multicomponent, they
mean that soils contain many different kinds of chemical compounds
that can react with one another in a myriad of ways. By open systems,
they mean that soils exchange matter in all its phases, as well as energy
(sunlight and heat), with their earthly surroundings: the atmosphere, the
biosphere, and the hydrosphere (water bodies). These exchanges of
matter and energy are themselves continually varying, both temporally
and spatially. Thus, a chemist sees soil as a complex, natural porous
material undergoing incessant chemical transformations because of
external influences from the larger ecosystem in which it evolves. These
transformations are often mediated by living organisms; hence the
modifier biogeochemical is especially apt to describe soil systems.
This complexity of soil not only offers an intellectual challenge as
great as found anywhere in the field of chemical science, but it also
provides an opportunity for the discovery of new compounds or
reactions that cannot be anticipated solely from laboratory studies with
synthetic chemicals. They await only the probing of the curious soil
chemist to be revealed, isolated, characterized, and recreated under
controlled conditions. With this also comes the possibility of applica-
tions of soil chemical know ledge to meet the needs of our society in
agriculture, medicine, and manufacturing. Often a new soil chemical
process turns out to be a response of the soil system to an external input
of chemical compounds that may pose a hazard for the biosphere (e.g.,
toxic metals in wastewater or strong acids in polluted rainfall). By
revealing the properties of this new process, soil chemists help to
pinpoint the natural pathways of detoxification that exist in soils and
that can be managed to improve environmental quality (see Chapter 3
for more about these pathways).
The heterogeneous mixture of organic and inorganic constituents in

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