Opportunity Windows and Added Value of Gentle Remediation Options for Contaminated Land Management

Paul Drenning

Opportunity Windows and Added Value of Gentle Remediation Options for Contaminated Land Management
Doctoral thesis, 2024

Well-functioning, healthy soils are increasingly recognized as vital to human well-being, but soil contamination impairs the capacity of soils to perform their essential functions and provide humans with ecosystem services (ES). Contaminated land poses risks to human health and the environment, which must be managed, but also constitute an important and underutilized land and soil resource for providing ES in urban areas through phytomanagement with gentle remediation options (GRO) – nature-based solutions using plants, fungi, bacteria, and soil amendments to manage risks at contaminated sites while also improving soil functionality. The overall aim of this thesis is to explore the opportunity windows and added value of using GRO for contaminated land management and develop applied knowledge and methods for practitioners to support a broader use of GRO in practice. Five studies were carried out to achieve the overall aim and specific objectives, containing both conceptual and empirical work, with a field experiment performed at the Kolleberga tree nursery. Specific contributions from the studies include: considering GRO applications for sustainable remediation and development (Paper I); developing a risk management framework for GRO (Paper II); investigating the costs and benefits and social profitability of GRO compared to conventional alternatives (Paper III); estimating time requirements for phytoextraction (Paper IV); and evaluating the effects of GRO on soil health (Paper V). Results from the studies in this Ph.D.-thesis are considered within the unifying concept of opportunity windows to explore the wider application and added value of GRO for contaminated land management and are connected to the generic workflow for contaminated land management in Sweden to facilitate communication with stakeholders and inclusion in the decision-making process. The applied knowledge and methods developed in this Ph.D.-thesis support the wider application of GRO for contaminated land management by exploring the opportunity windows for feasible use of GRO and demonstrating their added value.

Sustainable and Risk-Based Land Management (SRBLM)

Ecosystem services

Soil health

Phytomanagement

Soil functions

Cost-benefit analysis

Gentle remediation options (GRO)

Sven Hultins gata 6, Gothenburg, room SB-H5

Opponent: Professor Brett Robinson - School of Physical & Chemical Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

Online defence

Author

Paul Drenning

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Geology and Geotechnics

Other publications Research

Enhancing ecosystem services at urban brownfield sites - What value does contaminated soil have in the built environment?

IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science,; Vol. 588(2020)

Paper in proceeding

A risk management framework for Gentle Remediation Options (GRO)

Science of the Total Environment,; Vol. 802(2022)

Journal article

Comparison of PFAS soil remediation alternatives at a civilian airport using cost-benefit analysis

Science of the Total Environment,; Vol. 882(2023)

Journal article

Drenning, P., Enell, A., Berggren Kleja, D., Volchko, Y., Norrman, J. Probabilistic models to estimate the time required for phytoextraction. (Revised manuscript preliminarily accepted for publication in Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res.)

Drenning, P., Volchko, Y., Enell, A., Berggren Kleja, D., Larsson, M., Norrman, J. Evaluating the effects of gentle remediation options (GRO) on soil health. (Submitted to Sci. Total Environ.)

Soil and land are finite resources and well-functioning, healthy soils are increasingly recognized as vital to human well-being by supporting not only crop production for food security but also providing other essential ecosystem services such as water purification, carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, and habitat for biodiversity. Soil contamination is one of the many causes of soil degradation that has impaired the capacity of soils to perform their essential functions and provide humans with these vital services. Brownfields, typically urban or peri-urban contaminated and derelict land, can pose risks to humans and the environment but also constitute an important and underutilised land and soil resource for providing wider benefits in urban areas and achieve stated environmental goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

Contaminated land management still primarily relies on costly and environmentally damaging excavation-based remediation that removes the soil completely and considers soil as a waste to be disposed of rather than as a resource to be treated and reused. In contrast, phytomanagement with gentle remediation options (GRO) – nature-based solutions using plants, fungi, bacteria, and soil amendments – can potentially both manage contamination risks while also improving soil health to provide ecosystem services, but its use in practice is still limited. The overall aim of this thesis is to support the broader use of GRO for contaminated land management by exploring the different situations and conditions (i.e., opportunity windows) where GRO could be successfully applied and demonstrate its added value to provide benefits such as ecosystem services.

Subject Categories

Earth and Related Environmental Sciences

ISBN

978-91-8103-029-7

Doktorsavhandlingar vid Chalmers tekniska högskola. Ny serie: 5487

Publisher

Chalmers