Heavy-Metal Soil Contamination: Sources, Opportunities, and Sustainable Solutions
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 March 2026 | Viewed by 3036
Special Issue Editor
Interests: soil and groundwater contamination; potentially toxic elements
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue will offer an interdisciplinary perspective and apply new insights to examine soil contamination and promote environmentally sustainable management. This challenge necessitates the development of diverse and comprehensive (multi-media, multi-analytic, and multi-elemental) approaches to assessing and preventing pollution. With urban growth and the ongoing expansion of populations into abandoned industrial, mining, urban, traffic, and military areas, innovative technologies for soil modeling processes and remediation represent an increasingly important research topic.
We welcome the submission of papers on the occurrence, migration, and accumulation of rare-earth elements and potentially toxic elements in soils and dust (from the street, attic, or household), originating from various natural sources (e.g., volcanic activity, forest fires, soil erosion, and biological materials) and anthropogenic sources (e.g., vehicular emissions, industry, metallurgy, mining, and combustion). Sustainability is a new priority in the remediation of contaminated land. Research on the behavior and spatial distribution of both native and non-native potentially harmful elements in soils is essential to the restoration of contaminated sites. The potential of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL) to tackle these challenges is significant, as the advent of these technologies has transformed data management and analysis processes.
Dr. Pedro Tume
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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2400 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
- potentially toxic elements
- polluted area
- health risk assessment
- soil and groundwater contamination
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