Docent lecture – Yevheniya Volchko

Welcome to attend Yevheniya Volchko's promotion lecture as docent at the Division of Geology and Geotechnics, ACE. Yevheniya will present on the theme "Healthy Soils: Balancing Soil Protection and Remediation Efforts" and present how enhanced risk assessments potentially can reduce remediation costs and minimise environmental impact.

Join the presentation in Microsoft Teams:

Join the meeting now

Meeting ID: 323 468 939 85
Passcode: SjUhCa

Abstract:

Well-functioning healthy soils play a crucial role in achieving climate neutrality, restoring biodiversity, reducing pollution, ensuring healthy food systems, and building a resilient environment. However, our soils are deteriorating due to unsustainable management, overexploitation, climate change, and pollution. Although soil protection is frequently a primary concern in remediation projects in Sweden, there is a tendency to overestimate the risks that soil contaminants pose to soil organisms and neglect the importance of other critical soil qualities that affect soil biota. Like us humans, soil organisms can be affected not only by a toxic environment but also by deficiencies in water and nutrients. Therefore, it is important to distinguish the impact of contaminants on soil organisms from the influence of other soil qualities to enhance ecological risk assessments in remediation projects.

I will present a case from Sweden which demonstrates that remediation arising from such enhanced risk assessments has the potential to lead to lower remediation costs, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, minimised environmental impacts, and the prevention of socio-economic losses.

Docent-, Promotion- and Inauguration lectures are open to all staff and make opportunities to get at popular science introduction to a research area. The lecture is around 30 minutes followed by some time for questions from the audience. Celebration with fika afterwards. Open lecture, no registration needed.