Wiebke Mareile Heinze
Presentation
"One day during my bachelor studies I just happened to find myself attending a lecture on soil geography. Quite frankly, I had very low expectations when I entered the lecture hall and only joined because some friends convinced me to go. That decision later proved to change everything. Soil is beautifully complex, it affects all aspects of our lives, it interacts with air, water, plants, with a myriad of processes happening at various spatial scales at the same time. Needless to say, when I walked out of the lecture hall, I knew that I wanted to become a soil scientist."
Forskning
Ongoing research projects
Soil structure and soil organic carbon. Soils are a considerable storage of carbon in form of organic matter. Soil pore structure influences the turnover of soil organic matter as it affects oxygen supply and access for microbes. The project I'm currently involved in is led by Mats Larsbo and examines the interactions associated with the spatial distribution of soil pore structures and organic matter on organic carbon mineralization on a small scale to gain a mechanistic understanding of SOC-soil structure interactions that determine the development of SOC stocks in Swedish agricultural soils.
Microplastics. In order to know what potential impacts microplastics may have, we first need to understand where they are in the soil and how their distribution changes over time due to transport processes of microplastics in soil. Transport may be affected by soil structure, soil fauna, climatic factors, but also the different kinds, sizes and shapes of microplastics that we find in the environment. My past research projects involved characterizing microplastics in field soil profiles, as well as process-studies on their vertical dispersal by deep-burrowing earthworms. Additional work on transport of different kinds of microplastics by earthworms and water-driven transport is still continuing together with Geert Cornelis and Jeongyeon Yun. I also am involved as an advisor in the MIBAS project in Germany which has the aim to systematically asssess background levels of microplastics in cropland and forest soils.
Background
2025-ongoing Postdoctoral researcher, Soil and Environmental Physics group, Department of Soil & Environment, SLU
2024-2025 Postdoctoral researcher in EJP SOIL Sweden, Project Synthesis and Communication, Department of Soil & Environment, SLU
2020-2024 PhD in Soil Science, Soil Chemistry group, Department of Soil & Environment, SLU
2017-2019 Double degree MSc in Environmental Sciences with a focus on soil and land use, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and SLU
2012-2017 Bachelor of Science in Geography
Miljöanalys
- Microplastic extraction from soil
- Microplastic analysis via micro-FT-IR and Py-GC/MS (particle and mass concentration)
- Acid digestion and metal analysis of soils via ICP-MS
- Non-destructive geophysical exploration (Electrical resistivity tomography)
- X-ray computed tomography for soil pore structure analysis
- Microbial activity and carbon turnover (MicroResp, isothermal calorimetry)
Undervisning
Courses and lectures:
Environmental Geochemistry (master level course at SLU): lectures, preparation and supervision of laboratory exercises, data processing and reporting
Supervision:
PhD level
- Co-supervision of Jeongyeon Yun (PhD student at SLU, 2024-ongoing)
Master level
- Clara Ines Kieschnick Llamas (Master thesis project, 2024-ongoing)
- Nora Ottander (Master thesis project, 2023)
- Kathrin A. Leicht (Research internship, 2021)
Selected publications
Heinze, W.M., Steinmetz, Z., Klemmensen, N.D.R., Vollertsen, J., Cornelis, G., 2024. Vertical distribution of microplastics in an agricultural soil after long-term treatment with sewage sludge and mineral fertiliser. Environmental Pollution. 356, 124343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2024.124343
Hooge, A., Hauggaard-Nielsen, H., Heinze, W.M., Lyngsie, G., Ramos, T.M., Sandgaard, M.H., Vollertsen, J., Syberg, K., 2023. Fate of microplastics in sewage sludge and in agricultural soils. Trends in Analytical Chemistry. 166, 117184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trac.2023.117184
Heinze, W. M.; Mitrano, D. M.; Lahive, E.; Koestel, J.; Cornelis, G. Nanoplastic Transport in Soil via Bioturbation by Lumbricus Terrestris. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2021, 55 (24), 16423–16433. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c05614
Thomas, D.; Schütze, B.; Heinze, W. M.; Steinmetz, Z. Sample Preparation Techniques for the Analysis of Microplastics in Soil—A Review. Sustainability 2020, 12 (21), 9074. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12219074