SEMINAR: Soil and Water Seminar Series

Talitha Santini, from SEE - just back from a trip to the synchrotron in Melbourne! - is the first speaker in the Soil and Water Seminar Series 2010 (School of Earth and Environment and Centre for Land Rehabilitation).

Title: "Synchrotron radiation techniques for environmental scientists"

Abstract: Synchrotrons produce intense, monochromatic radiation over the infrared to hard X-ray range, allowing rapid, high quality data collection for techniques such as X-ray fluorescence (element identification and mapping), X-ray diffraction (mineral identification/quantification), X-ray absorption (element speciation), and infrared spectroscopy (bond structures in large molecules, biological samples and minerals). The superior data quality achievable at synchrotron facilities compared to laboratory equipment is a major advantage; and exciting opportunities exist for combining analytical techniques at fine spatiotemporal resolutions to obtain a more complete picture of system behaviour. XRD, XRF and XANES have been combined during the analysis of single samples to observe, for examples, plant uptake of contaminants from soil (Hokura /et al/., 2006), and the stabilization of heavy metals in soils after addition of coal fly ash (Terzano /et al/., 2005; 2007). This seminar will cover theory and applications of synchrotron radiation, with examples of interest to those in environmental sciences. Details of the application process to access the Australian Synchrotron will also be given.

All welcome!