Shiou Kuo
Improving Soil and Water Quality
While soil is a critical component supporting all living organisms, it can also be a source of contaminants affecting soil and water quality if mistreated. Dr. Shiou Kuo’s research focuses on the input of heavy metals into the soil from municipal and industrial wastes. He also is studying the impact of fertilizers on soils with heavy metal contamination and its availability to plants, a path through which harmful heavy metals can be transferred from soils to animals and humans. Currently, few viable techniques are available for remediating metal-contaminated soils. Dr. Kuo hopes to develop a new chemical and biological approach to mobilize soil metals to facilitate their removal from metal-contaminated soils. The preliminary results are encouraging. Eutrophication of surface waters interferes with their beneficial use. The major culprit of this environmental impairment is increased input of phosphorus into surface waters from a variety of human activities. Dr. Kuo is developing a new product by impregnating wood and other agricultural wastes with iron or aluminum oxide for sequestering phosphate and other oxyanions from eutrophic surface waters and wastewaters. The outcome of this research is a low-cost product effective in improving water quality.
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Contact Information
Shiou Kuo, Ph.D.
Soil Scientist
Crop and Soil Sciences
Washington State University
7612 Pioneer Way E.
Puyallup, WA 98371-4998
Telephone: 253-445-4573
Fax:
E-mail: skuo@wsu.edu
Dr. Shiou Kuo received his Ph.D. degree in soil chemistry from the University of Maine at Orono, Maine in 1973. He completed his postdoctoral work at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, and the University of California, Davis. In 1978, he joined the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Washington State University as an assistant soil scientist stationed at the Western Washington Research and Extension Center in Puyallup, Wash.. He was promoted to associate soil scientist in 1983 and to soil scientist in 1992. His research focuses are the chemistry of phosphorus and heavy metals in soils and their effects on plant productivity and soil and water qualities.
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