dr.ir. JE (Bert Jan) Groenenberg

I am a senior researcher and lecturer soil chemistry and soil quality. The thread in my research career is the modelling of soil chemical processes. I do this from both a fundamental and practical perspective and from the molecular to the field- and even regional/ national scale. Before I entered the Soil Chemistry group of Wageningen University I worked at Wageningen Environmental Research (WEnR). There I started to work on soil chemical models related to soil acidification (acid sulfate soils and acidification of forest soils by acid deposition). Thereafter I focussed on risk assessment of soil pollution by heavy metals, both in agricultural and industrially contaminated soils. Models were used to contribute to the development of environmental policy and legislation e.g. maximal values of metal contents in soils, maximal cadmium contents in phosphate fertilizers

I am happy to be part of the SOC group in which world leading models on ion binding to both organic matter (NICA-Donnan) and iron-oxides (CD-MUSIC) have been developed. I like to contribute to improve those models and to facilitate their use and extend their applicability for real world problems. Present research with PhDs aims at the development of measures to reduce cadmium uptake by crops (potatoes in Ireland and cacao in Latin America) because these products often exceed present standards in Europe. New is the use of mechanistic process based models for organic contaminants such as pesticides and PFAS. Chemicals for which mainly empirical models have been used so far.

As a lecturer and  I contribute to the courses SOC21306-Soil Pollution and Protection and SOC34806-Applications in Soil and Water Chemistry in which we look at how fundamental soil and aquatic chemical knowledge (including chemical models) can be used for real world problems  (mitigation of phosphate leaching, uptake of micro nutrients).. I like to work with students on new subjects and contributed to the course Trending Topics in Soil Water Atmosphere with lectures on PFAS and microplastics in soils.