The Geosciences Research Program supports research aimed at developing an understanding of fundamental Earth processes that can be used as a foundation for efficient, effective, and environmentally sound use of energy resources, and provide an improved scientific basis for advanced energy and environmental technologies.

Nature is More Complicated Than We Thought: Interactions Between Chloride and Humic Acids

Fluvial fulvic acid in coiled form. The average size of globular coils are on the order of 300nm3.

Organochlorine molecules are commonly observed in natural soils and in most cases have been attributed to pollution from manmade sources.  Natural organic matter, such as humic and fulvic acid, in the shallow subsurface is both universal and little understood. It has no fixed stoichiometry or structure, cannot be crystallized, and is famously difficult to characterize reproducibly. Professor Satish Myneni of Princeton University, together with co-workers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Puerto Rico used x-ray microscopy to provide the first in situ images of the macromolecules in various solutions and soils and showed that the molecules coil and relax depending on the composition of the solution and their proximity to a mineral surface.  For more details, see the Highlights page.

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