The Contaminated Land, Ecological Assessment and Remediation Conference Series (CLEAR) provides an international platform for scientists, consultants, and policy makers to interact. The target audience is those who are responsible for improving and protecting our environment in order to cope with rapid industrial development. The first CLEAR conference (CLEAR 2012) was held in Hangzhou, China in November 2012 and the second (CLEAR 2014) in Chuncheon, Korea in October, 2014.

The CLEAR 2014 conference focused on the issues of environmental pollution, remediation, and risk assessment. A number of special symposiums were held during the conference including Biochar for Environmental Management (joint with 2nd KBRC International Biochar Symposium), Novel Adsorbents and Nanomaterials for Contaminant Removal from Water and Wastewater, Pharmaceuticals in the Soil Environment: Fate and Effects in Soil and Transfer to the Food Chain, Heavy Metal Remediation in Agricultural Ecosystems, and Rapid Pollutant Transport from Farmland to Water Bodies: Mechanisms and Mitigation. The CLEAR 2014 conference attracted more than 350 participants from over 30 countries and facilitated considerable information exchange regarding land contamination, risk assessment, and remediation. This special issue of ESPR is a collection of selected contributions from the CLEAR 2014 conference participants and is published after a stringent peer-review process. The special issue mainly covers topics related to the environmental functions of advanced materials (such as carbon nanotubes, biochar, etc.).

As Guest Editors, we would like to thank the authors, reviewers, and fellow ESPR editors for their hard work and contribution towards this special issue. We would also like to thank Prof. Philippe Garrigues, the Editor-in-Chief of ESPR, for his kind invitation to publish this special issue.