Dácil Unzué Belmonte

SSS Soil System Sciences

The 2014 Outstanding Student Poster (OSP) Award is awarded to Dácil Unzué Belmonte for the poster/PICO entitled:

Silica fractionation and reactivity in soils (Belmonte, Unzué; D.; Vandevenne, F.; Schoelynck, J.; Struyf, E.; Meire, P.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Dácil Unzué Belmonte is a PhD student in the Ecosystem Management Research Group at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her research is focused on the study of the silica fractionation and its reactivity in soils. Different silica fractions (pools) can be found in soils, which dissolves slower or faster according to their structures (crystalline vs. amorphous), which has important implications for the functioning of the silica cycle and its link to the carbon cycle. This poster shows an overview of the phD and the ongoing work with some first results.

Publication resulting from the award

Unzué-Belmonte, D., Ameijeiras-Mariño, Y., Opfergelt, S., Cornelis, J.-T., Barão, L., Minella, J., Meire, P., and Struyf, E.: Land use change affects biogenic silica pool distribution in a subtropical soil toposequence, Solid Earth, 8, 737–750, https://doi.org/10.5194/se-8-737-2017, 2017.