Engineering Commons^™

Plant Uptake Of Environmental Contaminants: Applications In Phytoscreening, Matthew Alan Limmer

Doctoral Dissertations

"Plants interact directly with their surroundings, extracting nutrients and water from the subsurface to support growth and development of the plant. Through the roots, plants also exude and uptake numerous chemicals. Many of the pathways can also be used by environmental contaminants to be translocated to above ground plant tissues. Such uptake of contaminants has proven useful in remediation and phytoscreening - the use of plants to delineate contaminant plumes. Sampling of trees at contaminated field sites has been used to identify areas of groundwater contaminated with a variety of chlorinated solvents. The use of plants as contaminant biosensors requires …