[en] Organic molecules are common in all Earth surface environments, and their composition and chemistry play an important role in a variety of biogeochemical reactions, such as mineral weathering, nutrient cycling and the solubility and transport of contaminants. However, most of what we know about the chemistry of these molecules comes from spectroscopy and microscopy studies of organic molecules extracted from different natural systems using either inorganic or organic solvents. Although all these methods gave us clues about the composition of these molecules, their composition and structure change with the extraction and the type of ex-situ analysis, their true behavior is less well understood. The goal of this project is to develop synchrotron instrumentation for studying natural organics, and to apply these recently developed synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy and microscopy techniques for understanding the: (1) functional group composition of naturally occurring organic molecules; (2) macromolecular structures of organic molecules; and (3) the nature of interactions of organic molecules with mineral surfaces in different environmental conditions.