Workshop on Next Generation Humic Isolates

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This grant will support costs for a workshop to be held as part of the International Humic Substances Society (IHSS) biannual meeting. The goal of the workshop is to discuss future needs for maintaining the current reference samples of natural organic matter (NOM) of the IHSS and to consider approaches for collecting new reference NOM samples. NOM is important for several reasons. The NOM in soil is also known as soil humus. NOM is also present in oceans and in all lakes and streams. Not only does NOM play an important role in the global carbon cycle, but NOM also reacts with nutrients needed by plants and controls the fate of many toxic chemicals. Since the mid-1980’s, the IHSS has provided reference samples of NOM to scientists worldwide to use for research. The availability of these reference NOM samples has made it possible to compare results from many different studies. The scientists attending the workshop will summarize their recommendations and will prepare a report describing recent advances in understanding NOM.This grant will support costs for a workshop to be held as part of the International Humic Substances Society (IHSS) biannual meeting. The goal of the workshop is to discuss future needs for maintaining the current reference samples of natural organic matter (NOM) of the IHSS and to consider approaches for collecting new reference NOM samples. Natural organic matter (NOM) represents an important reservoir in the global carbon budget and participates in many important biogeochemical and environmental reactions ranging from supporting heterotrophic microbial activity to attenuating the transport of trace metal and persistent organic contaminants. Since the early 1980’s, the IHSS, the scientific community that studies NOM, has worked to develop an integrated understanding of NOM chemistry. In addition, the IHSS has distributed standard and reference NOM, humic and fulvic acids from terrestrial and aquatic environments, representing diverse sources from a biogeochemical and global perspective. The group attending the workshop will develop recommendations for sustaining the availability of current reference and standard humic substances for years to come. The group will also prepare a synthesis paper reviewing recent advances in understanding of NOM chemistry and reactivity and highlighting the ways in which the progress was advanced by using standard and reference samples from the IHSS. This workshop will advance understanding of NOM by maintaining the availability of these reference humic substances to the broad research community spanning environmental engineering and science, soil science, chemistry, limnology, and oceanography.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.