Soil-atmosphere exchange of persistent organic pollutants: Determination of concentration gradients with passive samplers

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The present work aims to advance the understanding of the role of soils in controlling the environmental transport of persistent organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Passive samplers developed to detect concentration (or fugacity) gradients of contaminants between soils and the atmosphere will enable measurement of whether the direction of contaminant movement is into or out of the soil in order to answer the question whether soils are sinks or sources for pollutants. Seasonal patterns of contaminant exchange behavior will be linked to environmental parameters, such as soil water content, sorption capacity, temperature, etc. Contrasting the flux behavior at monitoring locations that have different soil characteristics and contaminant input histories will aid in the identification of the key landscape features influencing contaminant mobility. Coordination of this study with ongoing efforts by partner institutions to understand flux within the atmospheric boundary layer by eddy covariance methods will augment data interpretive abilities and lead to estimations of time-averaged soil-atmospheric flux of these contaminants.