Challenges and Future Trends of Soil Ecotoxicology
A special issue of Soil Systems (ISSN 2571-8789).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 296
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Soil ecotoxicology plays a crucial role in understanding how anthropogenic activities, particularly pesticide applications and the release of emerging pollutants, affect soil biodiversity, ecosystem services, and sustainability. The increasing pressure on soils from intensive agriculture, industrial activities, and global environmental changes highlights the need for integrated approaches to evaluate soil health and ecological risks.
This Special Issue will bring together innovative research and critical reviews on soil ecotoxicology. We welcome contributions on the effects of pesticides, fertilizers, potentially toxic elements (PTEs), microplastics, nanomaterials, pharmaceuticals, and contaminant mixtures on soil organisms and ecosystem functions. Studies addressing methodological advances in laboratory and field bioassays, including approaches that increase realism and allow comparisons between temperate and tropical regions, are highly encouraged.
We also invite research on developing bioindicators and ecological risk assessment tools, incorporating native soil species with standardized test organisms to better capture community responses under varying environmental conditions. The influence of soil properties and environmental factors, such as temperature, on contaminant toxicity is another key area. Contributions exploring factors of extrapolation, ranging from standardized to native species, from artificial to natural soils, and from treated fields to adjacent non-treated areas, are particularly welcome.
Finally, we encourage studies proposing novel approaches linking ecotoxicological responses to ecosystem resilience, functional redundancy, recovery potential, and sustainable land management, as well as contributions that advance risk triggers and exposure models for local conditions through microcosm, mesocosm, semi-field, and field studies to support multi-phase environmental risk assessment frameworks.
Dr. Paulo Roger L. Alves
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Soil Systems is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- bioindicators
- soil biodiversity
- emerging pollutants
- contaminant mixtures
- risk assessment
- alternative test species
- climate change
- soil properties
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