This book represents a significant advance in the fundamental understanding of the role of soil organic matter (SOM) in sorption because of the approach taken via four key factors that may have an influence on sorption - soil organic chemistry, mineralogy, lipid chemistry and solvent conditioning - were studied and quantified. Most previous works in this area have focused solely on the effect of SOM chemistry on the sorption of non-ionic compounds. Much less attention has been paid to the interactions between SOM and the mineral phase and lipid components, or to SOM physical conformation, and no single previous study has investigated all four aspects on a set of soils in close geographic proximity and with very similar soil forming factors, especially that of parent material. The role of SOM chemistry on sorption of non-ionic compounds has been over-emphasized .Other factors, identified above, can alter the sorption properties of SOM to a degree that the effect of SOM chemistry is masked.
