Soils and Landscape Restoration - Chapter 9: Bioremediation and soils

Anthropogenic activities worldwide have caused ecological degradation that has resulted in the need to mitigate damage to essential ecosystem services in rural and urban areas. Plant-based technologies, such as phytoremediation and associated phytotechnologies, are ideal for such applications but require extensive knowledge of soil–plant interactions for restoration to be successful. Here we describe remediation of contaminated soils using plants, focusing on the selection of appropriate plant materials and soil factors important for designing remediation systems. The last section of the chapter contains five real-world examples of such systems, including (1) grasslands used for phytoremediation of soil phosphorus, (2) urban afforestation used to create forests in cities, (3) riparian buffer systems used to reduce agrichemical transport from agroecosystems, (4) short rotation woody crops used to enhance ecosystem services at landfills, and (5) woody species used for surface mine reclamation.