21 Mar New PhD thesis aligned with the objectives of the project (microbial indicators and phytoremediation)
Last 17th of March, Aritz Burges defended his PhD thesis entitled “Microbial indicators for the assessment of the impact of metal contamination and phytoremediation on soil health.” The defense took place in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of the Basque Country. Aritz has carried out this work in the Microbial Soil Ecology Group of NEIKER-Tecnalia, under the supervision of Dr. Carlos Garbisu and Dr. Lur Epelde. Other partners in the PhytoSUDOE project, Dr. Txema Becerril from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Dr. Petra Kidd from the Spanish National Research Council (IIAG-CSIC) and Dr. Carmela Monterroso from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), have been the oponents that have evaluated the thesis.
The main conclusions of the study indicate that phytoremediation and phytomanagement are phytotechnologies that provide substantial improvements in the soil functioning with added benefits to the mitigation of the risk caused by heavy metals, making them alternatives to the traditional physicochemical techniques used in the remediation of contaminated soils. In this sense, microbial properties with potential as indicators of soil health are valuable tools for the evaluation of the impact of heavy metal contamination, as well as the efficiency of phytoremediation processes. Likewise, the estimation of attributes of ecological relevance and ecosystem services, through the grouping of soil microbial properties, is an appropriate methodology that provides complementary information and facilitates the interpretation of the results.
In this link you can see a video (in SPANISH) summarizing the work carried out in the PhD thesis: https://youtu.be/vU1wgisxkJo.
