NanoFASE - element

The transport and speciation of ENMs in natural soils is highly dependent on their chemical and physical properties. Soil properties can be predicted based on their infra-red (IR) spectrum (measured via FTIR spectroscopy). There can be significant variation in soil properties across a country, a region or even a catchment. Thus the ENM fate may vary geographically. A subset of representative soils from the studied area, called the calibration set, is analysed statistically to find empirical relationships between the mid-infrared (MIR) spectrum and the fate descriptor. These relationships are applied to an independent subset for validation purposes. Once validated these are used for extrapolating fate descriptors to the rest of the soils.