Modeling Earth's chemistry: Making the invisible visible
An incredibly complex system lives beneath our feet, transporting metals to Earth's crust and undergoing a myriad of chemical reactions that influence our daily lives. These environmental interactions affect everything from our ability to use soil to produce food and the cleanliness of our drinking water to how we might mitigate our changing climate. Humans have a huge impact on Earth's subsurface—through mining, fossil fuel extraction, irrigation and energy waste storage—and we have to deal with the environmental problems that ensue. And yet, we can't see it.