Probes, Precipitation & Porosity - Soil Science Australia
Location
Charles Hawker Conference Centre
About
SOIL PHYSICAL PROPERTIES & PLANT AVAILABLE WATER
"Probes, Precipitation & Porosity - Soil Physical Properties & Plant Available Water". The SA Branch of Soil Science Australia (SSA) is hosting a one-day interactive workshop & field day. Join us for a day of learning and practising soil science. This is a unique opportunity to learn practical skills from experts in an interactive environment about soil physical properties, plant available water, and soil water monitoring.
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presenter biographies
Dr Cameron Grant hails from the University of Guelph in Canada and was an academic at the University of Adelaide for 20 years, teaching soil and water management. He has also worked to encourage undergraduate and postgraduate students to engage with National Soil Judging Competitions across Australia. In addition to consulting in the area of soil physics, he conducts research (and publishes) ways to predict soil water availability. He is currently the administrator for Soil Science Australia’s Certified Professional Soil Scientist (CPSS) program – the national certification for professional soil scientists. He would be happy to discuss CPSS with anyone at today’s workshop.
Dr John Hutson has worked in diverse areas of soil science, including soil-plant-water relations, irrigation and salinity, soil nutrient cycling, whole-farm nutrient pathways, environmental fate of nutrients and pesticides, farm and regional -scale soil survey, soil property characterisation and effluent disposal. He has worked in South Africa, the US and Australia.
He co-developed the LEACHM modelling suite at Cornell University, used to quantify the influence of soil, climate and management practices on salinity, pesticide and nutrient dynamics. LEACHM, used worldwide as a research tool, was also a pesticide regulatory model and its carbon and nitrogen version is the basis of the soil component of Cornell’s award-winning web-based nitrogen management tool, Adapt-N.
Local projects have encompassed spatial groundwater recharge patterns on the Lower Eyre Peninsula and South East of South Australia, the impact of soil and land management on nutrient and pesticide leaching, salinity control in vineyards, water and chemical dynamics in acid sulfate soils, and irrigation and nutrient strategies on dairy farms.
John continues to improve and extend the capabilities and scope of the LEACHM suite, linking weather, land use, management, soil survey and soil classification data to gain insight into local and regional soil water and chemical dynamics.
Dr Geoff Kew is a Pedologist and soil management advisor with over 30 years’ experience in soil survey and land evaluation in Australia and overseas. He has conducted soil surveys and land evaluation assessments in most irrigation districts in Australia for a range of crops including vines, olives, almonds, potatoes, sandalwood, bananas and mangoes. He has practical field skills in the management of wind and water eroded soils and saline soils in the Murray Mallee and Eyre Peninsula regions of South Australia.
Geoff completed a PhD with Alcoa Australia investigated the strength, water retention, mineralogy and impact of deep ripping (1.5 m) for land rehabilitation in regolith remaining after bauxite mining in the Darling Range of Western Australia. He received the 2008 C.G. Stephens PhD Award from Soil Science Australia for this work. He also holds a Master of Science in Pedology and soil survey from Reading University, UK and a Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree from The University of Adelaide.
Michael Cutting is currently employed as the Principal Project Officer - Land and Water Management with Natural Resources SA Murray-Darling Basin based in Strathalbyn. Michael has been working on sustainable land and water use projects in the SA MDB region since 2004, and more recently has led the implementation of Australian Government funded on-farm irrigation efficiency programs linked to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
Adam Pietsch is a Viticulture Advisor at ‘Farmer Johns’ in the Barossa Valley. A key component of his role is the supply, installation, operation and maintenance of soil moisture monitoring equipment, backed up with interpretation and irrigation agronomy advice. Adam’s experience in soil moisture monitoring also extends beyond Barossa vineyards to broadacre and pasture sites and, earlier in his career, vineyards in the Riverland where he supported growers through seasonal challenges of severe water restrictions, salt damage and then flooding rains. Adam holds a Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Viticultural Science) from The University of Adelaide.