Use of nuclear techniques in environmental and pollution studies

We present a brief review of nuclear techniques used in various research endeavours in the environmental sciences with special emphasis on the soil-plant system. The following topics are described and exemplified: (i) the present use of neutron activation analysis with emphasis on soil-to-plant transfer studies, (ii) the application of the isotope-dilution approach in heavy-metal adsorption studies in soil, (iii) the use of tracer techniques to follow the fate of organic pollutants in the soil-plant-groundwater system, and (iv) the determination of natural abundances of stable isotopes of N and O in studies on the fate of deposited nitrate in a forest ecosystem.