Newswise — July 18, 2016 - Besides being researchers in soil science, Dan Ferreira and Kosuke Noborio had nothing in common – until November 4, 2013. Ferreira teaches at Kennesaw State University, in Georgia, and Noborio works on the other side of the world at Meiji University, Japan.
But, November 4th was the day of the symposium titled “Battles of Soil Scientists in Fukushima, Japan,” with Noborio presiding, and Ferreira attending. From that symposium came an in-person meeting between the two researchers at the 2014 ASA, CSSA and SSSA Annual Meeting in Long Beach, discussion about potential research collaboration, and an invitation for Ferreira to visit Japan. These results show the power of scientific meetings in spurring creativity and collaboration amongst scientists – to the benefit of society.
“After I attended the 2013 meeting in Tampa, that sparked my current research,” says Ferreira. Fukushima is an area that was contaminated by radiocesium after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011. The disaster was spurred by an earthquake and resulting tsunami; clean-up efforts are ongoing.
Ferreira’s research is looking at ways to use plants (phytoremediation) to help clean up the contaminated soil.
“The way that radiocesium is incorporated inside the interlayers of 2:1 clays like vermiculite makes it very difficult to remove using ordinary remediation methods. However, phytoremediation techniques can often succeed in removing heavy metals from soils where other techniques fail. My colleague Matt Weand, a physiological ecologist at Kennesaw State, and I, have identified certain plant species that we think will be effective at accessing the radiocesium inside the clay mineral interlayers.”
“I invited Kosuke to meet with me at the 2014 Long Beach meeting,” says Ferreira. “We went out for lunch and began discussing my idea for remediating radiocesium in the soil downwind of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and potentially collaborating on it in the future.”
In May of 2016, Ferreira traveled to Japan, at the invitation of Noborio, visiting research fields of Noborio’s teams. He also presented two lectures at two universities – Meiji University and the University of Tokyo. Ferreira gave two lectures at Meiji University. One lecture was for undergraduates about environmental pollution and remedial technologies. The second was a higher-level talk for graduate students about his doctoral research on ion exchange mechanisms in the nanopore channels of zeolite minerals.
“Visiting Iitate Village in Fukushima Prefecture and discussing the research projects that Kosuke and his students are performing in the region really opened my eyes about the nature and severity of the challenges that the people in that area are facing”, says Ferreira. “Seeing the problems that the radiocesium soil contamination has caused first hand has given me new ideas for research projects to try and help the people of Iitate Village.”
“I am planning to submit a grant proposal to my university to fund a longer 3-week trip to Japan in late 2017 or early 2018 with my graduate student”, Ferreira explains. “I could potentially use this opportunity to explore some of the ideas that I had during our visit to Iitate Village. If this grant gets funded, it will allow Kosuke and me to expand our collaboration.”
Ferreira credits the 2013 ASA, CSSA and SSSA Annual Meeting with not only creating this new professional relationship, but sparking ideas for future research. “It all started with that session at the meeting in Tampa.”
This year's ASA, CSSA and SSSA Annual Meeting theme is "Resilience Emerging from Scarcity and Abundance." It will be held Nov. 6-9, 2016 in Phoenix. For information visit https://www.acsmeetings.org/.
This story originally ran in CSA News, a member magazine for ASA, CSSA and SSSA members.
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