Chlorine cycling in terrestrial ecosystems
Soils are important for agriculture and forestry, for ecosystems functions and central in biogeochemical cycles. Understanding soil processes has broad implications for many fields in environmental sciences, including identifying potential sources and fates of compounds, risk assessment and management, and understanding soil-water-air processes and nutrient uptake. There is an ubiquitous and extensive natural chlorination of organic matter in terrestrial ecosystems which may have implications on potential sources and fates of organochlorines, soil organic matter turnover, risk assessments and management of radioactive waste (36Cl), catchment fluxes, nutrient uptake, and element cycling.
Our research group have for instance recently investigated the importance of vegetation for chlorine cycling which can explain why local soil chlorine levels are frequently independent of atmospheric deposition (Montelius et al 2015).
We have also explored chloride retention processes in soil, Cl transport in soil and catchments subjected to forest management as well as VOCl measurements in water and air (t ex Montelius et al 2016, Svensson et al 2013). Catchment studies as well as experimental work show that chlorinated organic matter is not very mobile (Bastviken et al 2006, Svensson et al 2007), which question if chloride could be regarded as conservative in soil and in catchments (Svensson et al 2012).
