CAREER: Retention and Mobility of Beryllium in Soils and Sedimentary Environments

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Maintenance of soil is critically important for sustaining the world's growing population. This project aims to enhance scientific understanding of soil sustainability by developing a tool for measuring modern landscape change and reconstructing past Earth conditions. The project will help build the foundation for the career of a promising female earth scientist. She will contribute towards the development of a diverse workforce capable of tackling society's environmental challenges. Her efforts on this project will highlight the importance of soil as a resource and broaden citizen awareness of pollutants in their neighborhoods through K-12 education and a citizen-science activity called "Soil Kitchen", which will take place in one of the "Promise Zones" identified by the White House initiative as an area of economic need and community revitalization.This interdisciplinary project aims to improve our understanding of the limitations and opportunity of using beryllium isotopes as a tool for tracking sediment movement on landscapes. Beryllium isotopes sorbed to sediments are now being measured extensively to understand movement of soil particles and natural feedbacks. However, we lack understanding of the mechanisms of adsorption and desorption processes that are critical for the interpretation of new data. This project will use a combination of laboratory experiments and field-scale measurements to understand beryllium mobility and what it can tell us about the Earth's critical zone today and in the past. The project will engage a team of undergraduate students, graduate students, and a postdoctoral scholar in all aspects of the work. Data will be archived in NSF-supported databases.