Nutrients and Contaminants in Agricultural, Natural, and Engineered Systems: Environmental Processes and Remediation

Nutrients and contaminants are increasingly important challenges for environmental quality, agricultural sustainability, and ecosystem and human health. Intensive agricultural production, wastewater reuse, biosolids application, stormwater runoff, industrial activities, and other anthropogenic pressures can introduce nutrients and diverse contaminants into soils, sediments, and water systems. Emerging contaminants such as PFAS, microplastics, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, antibiotic resistance genes, and engineered nanomaterials have raised growing concerns because of their persistence, mobility, transformation, and potential ecological and health impacts. Understanding the environmental behavior of nutrients and contaminants requires consideration of physicochemical, biological, and hydrological processes governing their fate and transport. Advances in environmental chemistry, soil science, biogeochemistry, analytical methods, and remediation technologies provide new opportunities to address these challenges across agricultural, natural, and engineered systems.This Research Topic aims to advance mechanistic understanding of the cycling, transport, transformation, impacts, and remediation of nutrients and contaminants across agricultural, natural, and engineered systems. Particular emphasis will be placed on identifying how physicochemical properties, soil and sediment characteristics, microbial processes, hydrological conditions, and land-management practices regulate their environmental fate, persistence, mobility, and bioavailability. Recent advances in analytical techniques, molecular approaches, modeling, monitoring, and engineered materials provide new opportunities to characterize these processes across spatial and temporal scales. We also seek innovative approaches for mitigating nutrient losses and contaminant risks while recovering resources and maintaining soil and ecosystem functions. Contributions that connect fundamental environmental processes with practical solutions, including sorption and immobilization, biodegradation, biochar and other engineered materials, nutrient recovery, water treatment, and nature-based remediation, are particularly encouraged. By bringing together perspectives across environmental chemistry, soil science, biogeochemistry, agronomy, and engineering, this Research Topic aims to identify knowledge gaps and advance sustainable strategies for managing nutrient and contaminant challenges.We welcome contributions addressing but not limited to:• Nutrient and contaminant cycling and transport in agricultural and natural systems• Sorption, transformation, and degradation processes governing their fate in soils and sediments• Interactions among nutrients, contaminants, soil minerals, organic matter, plants, and microorganisms; design, optimization, and performance of engineered remediation and treatment technologies• Watershed- and catchment-scale nutrient and pollutant management strategies • Analytical, modeling, and monitoring approaches for tracking nutrient and contaminant dynamics across systems• The environmental and ecological impacts of nutrient and contaminant loading, including under changing climate and land-use conditions Studies addressing emerging contaminants, nutrient recovery, soil and water remediation, engineered materials, nature-based solutions, and sustainable agricultural management are particularly encouraged. Original Research Articles, Reviews, and Brief Research Report are welcome, especially studies bridging fundamental environmental processes with applied remediation, monitoring, and management strategies relevant to agricultural, natural, or engineered settings. Topic editors: Jianzhou He, Qianqian Dong, Xiaoping Xin, Tingting Fan Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85057/nutrients-and-contaminants-in-agricultural-natural-and-engineered-systems-environmental-processes-and-remediation