Green Technologies for Sustainable Urban Land and Air Remediation

Dear Colleagues,

The world’s urban areas are facing environmental challenges, such as air and soil pollution and public health. Today, urbanization is intensifying and cities are taking lead in climate change (high temperatures, extreme heat waves, increase in greenhouse gases, etc.). In the urban environment, planned, marginal, and vacant urban land is characterized by high concentrations of heavy metals and metalloids (As, B, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, Zn, etc.), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), whereas air pollution is the largest health burden. Urban air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen oxide (NOx), carbon oxide (CO), ozone (O₃), particulate matters (PMs), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), mainly come from traffic emissions. Urban land can range from industrial facilities to traffic areas (street canyons, plazas, parking areas, residential quarters, parks, and gardens). Therefore, urban vegetation has great potential in soil and air remediation reducing pollutant concentrations. Furthermore, urban greening offers a range of nature benefits that can make a portfolio of ecosystem services, such as aesthetic benefits, heat wave mitigation and cooling, rainfall capture, noise abatement, carbon storage and sequestration, erosion prevention, biodiversity provision, recreation, etc. Planting a healthy urban environment includes different forms of green infrastructures, such as tree alley, street hedgerows, green roof vegetation, living walls, vegetation barriers, etc. Evaluation of pollutant uptake, accumulation, and sequestration mechanisms in plants, and identification of physiological and biochemical characteristics, may add clarity to our understanding of plant resilience to environmental stress. Therefore, healing the urban environment involves the process of green cleaning of urban land and air leading to sustainable future hub cities.

For this Special Issue, we invite researchers to submit original articles or reviews addressing field observation in urban soil/air pollution, laboratory experiments, modeling and analysis, new  instrumentation, green technologies for sustainable urban land and air remediation, and ecophysiological plant response to contamination. This Special Issue calls for papers that cover biogeochemical cycles of metal(loid)s and organic pollutants, dust emission, transport and deposition, and their health impacts, as well as plant adaptation response to contaminants.  

Editors welcome articles that will include but are not limited to the following topics:

• Sources, mobility, bioaccessibility, dispersion, and fate pollutants in urban soils and air;
• Accumulation of pollutants in plants growing in an urban environment;
• Leaf tapping and retention of particulate matters;
• Quantification of carbon stocks in urban soils;
• Phytoremediation capacity of plants;
• Evaluation of air pollution tolerance index;
• Plant morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular response to urban pollution;
• Interaction of pollutants and climatic factors to plant growth and physiology in urban environments.

Dr. Vimal Chandra Pandey
Dr. Gordana Gajić
Dr. Valeria Ancona
Dr. Manhattan Lebrun
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• urban environments
• climate change
• metal(loid)s
• organic pollutants
• dust
• traffic emission
• urban vegetation
• leaf trapping
• phytoremediation
• health impacts
• carbon storage
• air pollution mitigation
• green technologies
• plant physiology and biochemistry
• plant adaptation to urban pollution