Download - New Zealand Society of Soil Science

• Obituary – Jack Bremner
• Norman Taylor Essay – Andrew Carran
• Lincoln University’s role in Soil Science Teaching at
the University of Canterbury - 1969 to 2006
• Selected abstracts from the New Zealand Trace
elements Group Conference 2008
Volume 56 No 2 April 2008
1

New Zealand Soil News
newsletter of the New Zealand Society of Soil Science
ISSN 0545-7904 (Print)
ISSN 1178-8968(Online)
volume 56 Number 2 April 2008
contents
Page
Editorial Kevin Tate 47
Response to Editorial by Peter Singleton Theo Wilms 47
Obituary Jack Bremner 48
Articles ‘Organisms in soils, people in landscapes and money in the bank’ -
An essay based on the 2007 Norman Taylor Memorial Lecture
Andrew Carran 48
Lincoln University’s role in Soil Science Teaching at the
University of Canterbury – 1969 to 2006. John Adams 54
News from correspondents 60
NZSSS 69
Abstracts 75
Murray Close et al Pesticide sorption and degradation characteristics in New Zealand Soils –
a synthesis from seven field trials
Thomas Wohling et al Comparison of three multiobjective optimization algorithms for inverse
Modeling of vadose zone hydraulic properties
David Lowe et al Fingerprints and age models for widespread New Zealand tephra marker
Beds erupted since 30,000 years ago: a framework for NZ-INTIMATE
Selected abstracts from the New Zealand Trace Elements Group Conference 2008, Hamilton,
New Zealand 13 – 15 February 2008 77
Conferences Soils 2008 – the Living Skin of the Planet Earth 86
Lakes Water Quality Society – Symposium 2008 – August, Rotorua
Please note
If you presently receive your copy of Soil News as hard copy, and would prefer to
receive it electronically, could you please contact Isabelle
(isabelle.vanderkolk@agresearch.co.nz)
45

Your contributions are required - New Zealand Soil News is your newsletter.
News, views, letters, articles (serious or otherwise)—send to:
Isabelle Vanderkolk
Climate Land and Environment Section
AgResearch Ltd
Private Bag 11008
Palmerston North
FAX: (06) 351 8032
email: isabelle.vanderkolk@agresearch.co.nz
Deadline.............. for the June issue of Soil News is Friday 30 th May 2008
New Zealand Soil News
Visit our website:
http://nzsss.rsnz.org/
Editor I Vogeler- IVogeler@hortresearch.co.nz
Typing I Vanderkolk – isabelle.vanderkolk@agresearch.co.nz
Printing Massey University Printery
Correspondents I Lynn, Landcare Research, Lincoln; C.Smith, Lincoln University;
S. Bowatte, AgResearch Grasslands; M Hubbard, Massey University;
S Lambie, Landcare Research (Massey University), Palmerston North;
D J Lowe, Waikato University; M Laffan, Soil Professionals, Australia;
M Taylor, Environment Waikato, Hamilton; G N Magesan, Scion, Rotorua;
D Houlbrooke, Invermay Agricultural Centre, Mosgiel; R Stenger, Lincoln
Environmental, Ruakura Research Centre, Hamilton; H Barlow, Crop & Food
Research, Lincoln; A Ghani, AgResearch, Ruakura Research Centre, Hamilton
New Zealand Society of Soil Science Officers 2006–2008
President
Vice President
Past President
Secretary
Treasurer
Council
A D Mackay, AgResearch, Palmerston North
B E Clothier, HortResearch, Palmerston North
J Adams, Christchurch
P M Fraser, Crop & Food Research, Private Bag 4704, Christchurch
C A M de Klein, AgResearch, Invermay
A Hewitt, Landcare Research, Lincoln; G N Magesan, Scion, Rotorua,
R D McLenaghen, Lincoln University; L Schipper, Waikato University;
P Singleton, Environment Waikato, Hamilton; I Vogeler, HortResearch,
Palmerston North
NZSSS subscriptions
NZSSS subscriptions become due on 1 July each year. Individual members who do not pay their
subscription before 31 October in a given year will be asked to pay an additional $NZ10.00 as a
penalty for late payment.
If paid by 31 st October: After 31 st October:
Member (NZ) $60.00 $70.00
Student Member $35.00 $45.00
Member (Overseas) $60.00 $70.00
Retired Member $35.00 $45.00
Library $70.00
Summit Quinphos is a corporate member of NZSSS
46

Editorial
By Kevin Tate
The surprisingly rapid onset of global warming and associated feedbacks is graphically shown by e.g.,
accelerated ice melting in both hemispheres, species extinctions and increasing methane ebullition
from the Arctic tundra. These dramatic changes are occurring at the same time as oil prices are rising
and peak oil production is apparently imminent.
Both these recent developments pose stark warnings for urgent action to break our dependence on
fossil fuels. Central to our response is the question of how we will feed and clothe a burgeoning
human population in a warmer world without reliance on oil. What alternatives to this hitherto cheap
energy source do we have for production, processing, packaging, transport, and storage? Biofuels are
one possibility but, increasingly, scientists in many parts of our world are concluding we simply don’t
have the land available to grow food and produce energy. Moreover, biofuel production from crops is
often associated with very unfavourable input: output energy ratios and associated enhanced
greenhouse gas emissions.
Clearly, soils and how we manage them will be crucial in our response, both globally and in New
Zealand. In New Zealand, we do have the land for both food and energy production, and cleanly, if we
choose crops like willow or pampas grass (Miscanthus) for biofuels. But, we concluded several years
ago that our soils might lose 5–6 % of their carbon (and associated nutrients in soil organic matter),
based on projections of global warming by 2100. More intense storms and droughts are also likely,
adding to these losses. Warmer temperatures mean greater decomposition, especially with adequate
soil moisture. The greater inputs of C from CO 2 fertilization may not compensate for these losses, but
may simply increase cycling. More varied landscapes may offer some relief, with trees helping to
ameliorate these warmer temperatures and slow down decomposition, as well as protecting soil against
enhanced erosion and providing fodder for animals.
One of the world’s leading experts on oil reserves has recently argued that the only way to avoid
global food shortages in coming decades is a planned and rapid reduction in fossil fuel use, and a
return to more organic methods of producing food. This view is supported by the current food riots in
some developing countries caused by rising oil and grain prices.
We already have technologies to achieve this, and, according to the Fourth Assessment Reports of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (www.ipcc.ch), to also avoid catastrophic climate change
later this century. These reports, published in 2007, represent the combined wisdom of thousands of
the world’s leading scientists. They indicate that we still have time to act and many of the
technological solutions we need are already available. The question is: do we have the resolve to plan
and act quickly enough, against a background of dwindling supplies of oil?
Response to the Editorial by Peter Singleton (December 07)
Regarding Peter Singleton's editorial (December 2007) here in Taranaki we have had a long term
chairman of the Regional Council and he and the Chief Executive have given policies direction over
many years and so we are fortunate. With regards to water quality; we have 1916 dairy farms and
480,000 cows and if it wasn't for the riparian planting along ditches, streams and rivers, our water
purity would be so much poorer. The prison has a large garden and thousands of native plants are
cultured by prisoners and these are planted out by offenders on community work. This has been going
on for at least 25 years. The Corrections Department has just bought land in Christchurch for prisoners
to grow plants and so there may be an avenue for Environment Waikato to lobby Corrections to
purchase land in the Waikato so that intensive riparian planting can occur.
Theo Wilms
71 Fulford St, New Plymouth
47

Obituary
Jack Bremner
John ‘Jack’ Bremner, 85, Distinguished Professor Emeritus from Iowa State University, died on 27
July 2007 at his home in Palm Desert, CA.
Dr Bremner was born 18 January 1922 in Dumbarton,
Scotland to Archie and Sarah Bremner. He was a research
scientist at Rothamsted Experimental Stations in England
from 1944-1959 and a researcher and professor of
agronomy and biochemistry at Iowa State University from
1959-1992.
He authored more than 300 scientific publications and made
seminal contributions to the fields of soil chemistry and
biochemistry. He was a world leader in research developing
methods of reducing environmental problems associated
with the use of nitrogen fertilisers.
Bremner was a 50-year member of ASA and SSSA. He
received numerous national and international awards for his
contributions to science, including Carnegie, Rockefeller,
and Guggenheim fellowships. He was elected Fellow of
ASA and SSSA in 1969 and received the Environmental
Quality Research Award in 1990 and the Soil Science
Distinguished Service Award in 1993.
Bremner received the Alexander von Humboldt Medal and Award in 1982 and an honorary doctor of
science degree from University of Glasgow in 1987. He was elected to the National Academy of
Sciences in 1984.
He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Mary; son Stuart (Sarah) Bremner; daughter Carol (Mike)
Einsidler; and two grandchildren. He was buried in Iowa State University Cemetery.
articles
‘Organisms in soils, people in landscapes and money in the bank’
by Andrew Carran
An essay based on the 2007 Norman Taylor Memorial Lecture
Introduction
I heard Norman Taylor speak to a meeting at Lincoln College in 1971. He had been retired for a
decade then, but had recently chaired a committee reporting to the Government on land use and
erosion in the East Coast region of the North Island. The “Taylor Report” dealt with the highly
contentious issue of defining boundaries for grazing land, and production and protection forestry. He
spoke also of his great reluctance to become involved in the project because any recommendations he
made could have economic and social consequences and that he could not fully understand or
48

anticipate. He was persuaded to undertake the work by officials who clearly pointed out that no-one
else was better qualified than he because of his understanding of the soil and landscape properties that
lay at the heart of the “East Coast problem”.
Norman Taylor's talk and the subsequent discussions unconsciously, but neatly, foreshadowed the
misgivings that many soil scientists have had, about their dealings with central and local government,
commercial and legal parties and communities. The context we work in has been fundamentally
changed however and many current concerns exist in the border areas between agricultural production
and environmental protection because soils are used by people and are changed because of that use.
Concepts like equilibrium states begin to lose relevance as human activity influences the soil forming
factors and more or less continuous change occurs. Many soil scientists have responded to the
changed context pragmatically, as Norman Taylor did, but often remain deeply uncomfortable about
moving outside strict discipline boundaries. Much of the tension around these issues arises from the
different standards of evidence that are acceptable to different groups. Scientists have attitudes toward
objectivity and uncertainty that are often inconvenient in the wider world.
Soils are changed by human use. Some of the changes can be predicted and measured. Some can be
managed or mitigated in an informed way. Others changes are poorly understood and the potential for
unknown effects always exists in the complex ecological setting that soil provides. As conflicts over
the use of soil and water grow so does the volume of data, information, opinion and propaganda from
interest groups that the soil science community needs to assimilate, contribute to, criticise or debunk.
Three examples of the interaction between soils and human activity are now discussed:
1. Cultivation history can be an important agent in determining the distribution of soil processes
across landscapes. Nitrification is one of these processes and can exert subtle but powerful change in
soil properties. In some areas at least it will be in farmers' interest to understand the status of
nitrification in their soils
2. Two perceptions of the soil resource and the importance of knowing the history of resources in
a consideration of their future.
3. The question “Is there money in the (soil) bank?” is used to consider the value of the soil
resource to the New Zealand economy,
1. Cultivation as an agent of change
Over the past decade the movement of nitrogen (N) from grassland farms to surface or subsurface
water has become a matter of public policy interest. Methods for managing or mitigating this have
been widely pursued in publicly and commercially funded research programmes. Public policy has
also begun to focus on planning to reduce current loadings of N in catchments or to limit future growth
of those N loads. Farmers have a new interest in determining whether or not the properties of their
soils and landscapes are being accurately represented (or at least not over-assessed) in, or by, the
models used to predict N loss from their farms. Equity becomes an important issue in all of these
deliberations and this produces some important changes for the soil science community.
The assumptions made in the nutrient budgets or process models that are used to define N losses from
farms become very important in this context. Nitrification is assumed to be an active process in
almost all cases and this profoundly affects the estimates of N loss from farms. This view tends to
neglect the influence of cultivation, but the history of agriculture is essentially a history of cultivation
of soils. Cultivation is the means to establish a crop and also the means to enhance nutrient supply to
it. Cultivation turns the combined nutrients in the soil organic matter, a natural capital stock, into a
liquid asset. The tyranny of topography has meant that the agricultural exploitation of the New
49

Zealand landscape has used regular cultivation sparingly and occasional cultivation wherever slope
and access have permitted. Cultivation history may be significant in determining the risk of nitrate
leaching from grassland farms. The release of ammonium-N (NH 4 + -N) from soil organic matter
provides the key requisite for sustained growth of nitrifying bacteria and makes the accumulation of
nitrate-N (NO 3 N), and risk of leaching or denitrification, possible or even inevitable. Nitrification is
also supported where natural processes cause an accumulation of NH 4 + -N as in Mediterranean
environments where seasonality of plant growth and microbial activity can become uncoupled by
drought and rainfall patterns. Application of NH 4
+ yielding fertilisers or manures will generally
encourage growth of nitrifying organisms if there are no other environmental constraints. Given these
exceptions nitrifying organisms can be regarded as companions of cultivators throughout the
agricultural zones of the world. Many of the environmental issues facing agriculture flow on from the
activities of nitrifying organism and can be be regarded as tillage driven. An interesting question
arises from this view: “is the effect of tillage on nitrifiers persistent after tillage has ceased or practises
changed?' This is particularly interesting in a New Zealand context where livestock-based industries
tend toward long periods between cultivation, or the development of pasture land free of cultivation.
In this section two sets of data will be used to consider these issues. One is drawn from hill country
sites and the other from a high producing pasture site that had not been cultivated for a quarter of a
century. These two data sets provide a basis for considering the role that agricultural management of
soils has in establishing and maintaining nitrifier populations and perhaps changing the potential for
nitrogen losses from soils for a very long time.
Example 1
The first example is drawn from the Ph D study of Saman Bowatte (2002). Soils were taken from four
sites located in sheep farms on low altitude hill country in Hawke’s Bay. These sites differed in their
slope and the quantity of N that moved through the mineral-N pool. In field experiments, the sites
showed low or very low rates of nitrification of urine-N when compared with other local studies (Ball
et al 1978, Bowatte, 2002). Soils were also taken from three Manawatu floodplain soils (Kairanga,
Karapoti and Manawatu silt loams) that had been exposed regularly to urine. All soils were air dried,
sieved, re-moistened, then incubated aerobically with, or without, added cow urine supplying 400 mg
N/kg dry soil. The experiment was replicated 3 times and a complete set of treatments removed and
analysed for NO 3 - -N and NH 4 + -N following 0.5 M KCl extraction. The data from days 14 and 56 are
shown in table 1.
Table 1
Soil/site
Site productivity under
grazing
Tonnes Dry matter/ha*
% of Mineral N as
NO3
after 14 days
% of Mineral N as
NO3
after 45 days
Manawatu 12 83 100
Kairanga 12 100 100
Karapoti 12 85 100
Ngamoko Flat 20 52 95
Ngamoko Steep 10 7 50
Waipawa Flat 8 3 66
Waipawa Steep

These data indicate that the floodplain soils with a history of cultivation and episodes of exposure to
excreta N, have existing populations of nitrifying organisms that are large enough, or can expand fast
enough in 14 days, to nitrify the substantial pool of urine-N added to these soils. Nitrification is
relatively slow in the soil from the flat Ngamoko site. This is a curious result given that this site is an
extremely productive stock camp that has been receiving very high inputs of excreta N for at least
three decades. An abundance of NH 4 + -N has not induced a large nitrifier population but the eventual
development of one under the incubation conditions suggests that there is not a limitation imposed by
chemical properties. Stock camps have unique soil processes however as large quantities of faecal
carbon are deposited in addition to N. In essence this is the opposite of the cultivation situation as it
favours heterotrophic assimilation of N as well as competition for the safe living room that inefficient
autotrophs need. Ecological constraints on nitrification appear to be as important at this site as they
are in many natural grasslands.
The amount of N cycling in the other soils reduces sequentially and with it the ability to establish
nitrification by day 58. Infrequent exposure to excreta N and no exposure to cultivation leaves these
soils outside the normally assumed behaviour in terms of NO3 –N formation and N loss.
Farmers who have significant areas of soils that do not conform to the nitrification assumptions in the
current models should be intensely interested in using soil tests to describe their land units. Regional
councils interested in developing N loading models for catchments should be equally interested in
supporting soil testing and collating the information. This is a radically different proposition from
previous inventory attempts for soil properties and processes because it can be driven by activity at the
level of the land user and over the landscape as a whole. It is focussed on defining key differences
rather than finding some acceptable level of similarity for modelling purposes. Cultivation emerges
here as a feature that distinguishes between the two groupings of soil that have for convenience been
called 'floodplain' and 'hill' soils. ‘Cultivated’ and ‘uncultivated’ may be more functional descriptors.
These are also useful in a broader sense because they tie the function of nitrification, and its associated
problems, to human activity and management choices.
The New Zealand soil resource and human intervention
The way in which we view human impacts on the soil depends on our view of the starting condition.
If we regard the foundation resource as rich in natural capital, it is is easy to develop a negative view
of the changes that the last 150 years have brought. If the foundation resource is viewed as poor, with
multiple layers of limitation to economic use and nation building, much of the subsequent change can
be seen as positive.
In “Growing for Good”, the 2005 report on New Zealand agriculture by the Parliamentary
Commissioner for the Environment, the first of these positions is taken in its introduction. New
Zealand is seen to be “blessed with fertile soils and a wonderful climate for agriculture”. This view
creates an unresolved tension with problems of soil and water quality the report lays out that are
related to high rates of fertiliser use and expanding areas of irrigation. If there was an abundance of
natural capital, reliance on technical or purchased inputs would become necessary only when the
resources had been damaged or depleted. This has not been the case in New Zealand. Failure of
agricultural settlement because of infertile soils is well documented. The importance that the fertiliser
industry had in realising Julius Vogel's late nineteenth century vision of New Zealand's landscape
undergoing a step change to an agricultural landscape, and the dominance that raw material imports
for fertiliser manufacture has had in the national accounts are overlooked in taking the “fertile soils”
position. It is still a popular and comfortable view of the nation's resource though, and entirely
understandable through the eyes of the traveller or casual viewer. As Cook and Banks viewed the
eighteenth century landscape and wrongly interpreted tall forest cover as an indicator of fertility so
contemporary eyes can see, again wrongly, greenness and abundance of farm animals as an indicator
of the natural wealth of the landscape. Cook and Banks did not appreciate the time taken to amass the
51

forest biomass and contemporary eyes cannot see the scale of the inputs that have and continue to be
invested to support the visible productivity of agricultural landscapes.
Norman Taylor and his contemporaries were preoccupied with analysing the resource in a rational way
and understanding the limitations to use that were associated with their particular properties. Many of
the limitations to use were related to topography and slope stability and obvious. Others were
unexpected because of their intensity: the paucity of available phosphate for instance, or their novelty,
deficiencies of sulphur and selenium, molybdenum, cobalt and copper. This awareness of limitation to
pastoral use is clearly expressed in soil survey reports and in the early uptake of the Land Use
Capability (LUC) methodology. Understanding the distribution of nutritional limitations to plant and
animal production and how to manage them was an important focus for the development of soil
chemistry and soil fertility and plant nutrition in New Zealand through the 1940-1980 period. It is the
success of these programmes that supports the “fertile soils” view of our resources. There are an
abundance of visual cues that reinforce the notion of a richly endowed landscape but very few pointers
to the substantial investment that has gone into the land and the scale of the transformation that has
taken place.
Does it matter? Yes; if you set out to consider the state of the soil resource and the impacts that land
use and agricultural practice has upon them your starting assumptions are fundamentally important.
The “fertile soil” assumption can easily lead (as in the case of Growing for Good) to a negative view
of the impacts of productive use. Technical inputs are seen as tools to extract more productivity from
the resource base with associate risks to physical and biological properties of the soils and to the
composition of drainage water. The “infertile soil” or limited resource assumption leads to much more
complex considerations. Technical inputs can viewed as an investment to augment inadequate natural
capital and enable development of an agricultural economy. This historic view of what we had as a
nation and what investment was needed to access the land as an economic resource also affects
responses to contemporary questions about the status of the soil resource and impacts of land use. The
list of resource problems that is drawn up is likely to be independent of the assumptions you have,
correct or not, but the solutions you propose to those problems may depend significantly on initial
assumptions (?). Falling back on the natural fertility of the soil and avoiding technical inputs may
appear as useful strategy if you assume natural abundance, while identifying the match of inputs
appropriate to the limitations that characterise particular production systems in use now or proposed
may seem a much better strategy if natural resources are assumed to be limited.
Was there money in the (soil) bank?
For settler societies an abundance of organically combined nutrients was money in the bank that could
be withdrawn through cultivation and cropping. The tall grass prairie of the United States, that
became the Corn Belt, was settled at the same time as New Zealand and was farmed like there was no
tomorrow. Organic matter had accumulated in abundance since the retreat of the great ice sheets, the
land was flat and, while the winters were long and savage, the potential for photosynthesis during the
continental summer was great. For a hundred years the best soils continued to realise wealth for the
nation with modest inputs. This contributed to the development of an industrial economy that was
able to re-invest, albeit clumsily in agriculture through subsidies once the bank accounts - the organic
matter reserves - were depleted and erosion of the soil body was advanced.
New Zealand enjoyed no such access to to money in the bank. Although many areas had soils with
excellent physical properties and the climate was temperate, matching products with markets was an
enormous obstacle and once resolved, landscape and soil limitations hampered progress. Growth in
productivity came only on the back of technical inputs. Money had to be spent to make money from
agriculture in New Zealand because of the nature of the soil resource. Land that has a long history of
investment for agriculture now passes into residential use in many parts of the country. At the same
time dryland soils that have little history of investment are being irrigated for more productive uses.
52

Irrigation does substitute for rainfall but cannot substitute for soil development. Farms, drought free,
but hungry for investment are the predictable outcome.
The economist Brian Easton has recently argued that adverse terms of trade for agricultural
commodities have contributed to the slow development or under-development of the New Zealand
economy. A hard look at our soil resources would suggest that the need to spend in order to earn has
been a powerful amplifier of Easton's linkage.
As we try to resolve the current crop of issues around soil and land use keeping a clear eye on history
and avoiding the convenient mythologies seems wise. Similarly, looking past the claims of interest
groups and sceptically examining the match between their economic goals and intentions for land use
intentions may help soil scientists through the information morass.
Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to Dr Alec MacKay, President of the New Zealand Society for Soil Science, and the
Society's Council for the of the Norman Taylor Memorial Award.
I also wish to thank Dr Alan Hart who acted as a sceptical sounding board during the preparation of
the lecture and its subsequent transformation into this essay. Dr Saman Bowatte generously allowed
access to data unpublished at the time of the lecture and I am also grateful to Allan Palmer, Louis
Schipper and Ron McLenaghen for their organisation and support at the three lecture venues.
The paintings
The landscape paintings used to illustrate the lecture aroused a lot of interest. Most can be viewed as
good quality images with using the links below. I have not been able to find a good link for the Rita
Angus painting “Scrub burning Northern Hawke’s Bay 1962” but am aware that a major retrospective
exhibition of her work is currently being prepared at Te Papa and this will include many of less
accessible works. I used the Doris Lusk painting “Canterbury Plains from the Cashmere Hills”
because it neatly captured the impacts of agriculture and human settlement on the landscape. It also
appealed because it was painted in 1952, a high point in agricultural optimism in New Zealand, when
sheep farming for wool appeared to be the route to prosperity just as milk production does today. The
wool boom busted within two years though and since then the valley shown has grown two crops of
Pinus radiata, a land use change unthinkable in 1952.
Doris Lusk “Canterbury Plains from the Cashmere Hills:
http://www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz/GalleryOnline/IX2/L000026F.HTM
Rita Angus “Wanaka” http://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/PROD/Artists_Angus_Rita/B17
Leo Benseman “Canterbury spring”
http://www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz/GalleryOnline/RECORDS/R0000154.HTM
Dick Frizzell; “Milled hill gorse and bracken-Tokoroa 1987”
http://www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz/GalleryOnline/RECORDS/R0000581.HTM
Grant Wood “Fall plowing” http://www.artcyclopedia.com/goto/prints-310399
* This can be regarded as a general proxy for scaling the annual of nitrogen through the mineral N
pool at each site
____________________
53

Lincoln University’s role in Soil Science Teaching at the University of
Canterbury - 1969 to 2006
John Adams - Senior Fellow, NZ School of Forestry, University of Canterbury
Introduction
For 38 years between 1969 and 2006, Soil Science staff from Lincoln University taught forestry,
science and forest engineering students at the University of Canterbury. With Lincoln’s withdrawal
from this teaching at the end of 2006, it seems an appropriate point at which to record the history of
this long and unique association.
Background – How and Why the Arrangement Began
Canterbury University College had offered a Forestry degree and a Certificate course in Forestry from
1925 to 1934 when it was disestablished. In the mid 1960’s after many years of debate, the University
of Canterbury gained approval to re-establish a forestry degree and in 1966 appointed Professor P. J.
McKelvey as the Foundation Professor in the Faculty of Forestry.
The original Bachelor of Forestry Science (BForSc) degree contained a paper on Forest Geology.
Professor McKelvey wanted the new BForSc degree to have a Soil Science component and in 1967
began informal discussions with Professor T.W.Walker, Head of the Department of Soil Science at
Lincoln College, about whether his department could contribute to the teaching of a course in Soil
Science in the new degree. Professor Walker was supportive of the idea, as was Dr M.M Burns,
Principal of Lincoln College.
In early to mid September 1967, Dr C.J.Burrows, then Lecturer in Plant Ecology in the Botany
Department at the University of Canterbury, formally approached Professor Walker about teaching
Soil Science to BSc students alongside BForSc students.
On 29 September 1967 Dr Burrows circulated a letter to a number of academic staff at the University
of Canterbury. Headed “Development of Soil Science at the University of Canterbury” it called a
meeting on 6 October of interested persons to discuss the possible development of Soil Science
teaching at Canterbury, at least to Stage I level, during the 1970 to 1974 quinquennium. He suggested
that it was generally acknowledged by those who are most interested (Forestry, Botany, Geography)
that the teaching of Soil Science at Canterbury was academically desirable. He further suggested that
the meeting should discuss what should constitute a Soil Science course and how it might be
implemented, when in a student’s career he should he be able to take Soil Science, and implementation
matters such as staffing, laboratory, office and lecture space, technical assistance and equipment.
Finally he suggested that one way in which Soil Science could be run at Canterbury was for the
Department of Soil Science at Lincoln College to be involved and noted that Professor Walker had
indicated a willingness to participate provided that staffing needs, etc were met.
The letter was sent to several Departments at the University of Canterbury, including Forestry,
Botany, Geography, Geology, Chemistry, Zoology, and Civil Engineering.
Prof Walker forwarded Dr Burrows letter (seeking comment) to Dr M.M.Burns, Principal of Lincoln
College, on 2 October. Dr Burns must have approved immediately because things moved exceedingly
quickly.
A paper dated 10 October 1967 proposing a new academic development in the form of a course in Soil
Science was put together by Professor W.B Johnston (Professor of Geography), Professor M.Gage
(Professor of Geology) and Dr Burrows for a meeting of the University of Canterbury Faculty of
Science on 17 October. The main features of the proposal were
54

1. Teaching would be done by the Department of Soil Science at Lincoln College.
2. The paper initially would be offered at Stage I level but with Chemistry I as a prerequisite. This
was unusual because it meant that, despite being a stage I paper, it could not be taken until a
student’s second or third year.
3. The paper would be in two parts (a) Pedology and (b) The Physical and Chemical Nature of
Soils with three hours of lectures and a three or four laboratory each week to be held in a
Geology Department laboratory offered by Professor Gage. In addition, three or four days of
field trips were proposed.
4. Estimated initial enrolments were “probably as high as 35”.
5. One Lecturer (or Senior Lecturer), one demonstrator and one laboratory technician would be
required.
6. Funding. A non-recurring setting-up grant of $10,000 for equipment and materials and $500 for
library resources, and a recurring grant of $1500 for running expenses were foreshadowed.
The Faculty of Science approved it for submission to the University of Canterbury Professorial Board
for inclusion as a potential new development in their 1970 – 1974 Quinquennial Grant proposals.
Soon after his appointment Professor McKelvey gained approval for the Bachelor of Forestry Science
(BForSc) degree to be a four year degree with a structure of two intermediate years followed by two
professional years of study. Soil Science would be taken in a student’s second year because a
prerequisite of Chemistry I was required for the paper (that is students had to have passed Chemistry I
before being allowed to enroll in the Soil Science paper).
Forestry studies proper (that is the first professional year of the degree) began in 1970 but the first
Forestry students began their intermediate year in 1968 and Soil Science was first offered to them in
1969, the students’ second intermediate year. There were 15 students in that first Soils class.
However, the wish to make the paper available for BSc students had struck a snag. While the proposal
had been reconfirmed by the Faculty of Science on 9 June 1970, the University of Canterbury
Professorial Board had decided at their meeting on 12 June 1970 to put the new developments
foreshadowed in the Quinquennial Grant proposals on hold until March 1971 in order to better plan for
their introduction. In February 1971, Professor McKelvey wrote to Professor N.C Phillips, the
University of Canterbury Vice-Chancellor and Rector, strongly confirming his support for the
introduction of Soil Science to the BSc schedule of papers. He had earlier expressed his hope in a
handwritten note to Professor Walker that “--- it will be plain sailing this time”. It was and from 1972
it was included in the BSc schedule for the first time, four years after first being available to BForSc
students. Such is the glacial pace and tortuous pathways that university proposals are often subjected
to.
What is really striking about the initial development and implementation of the proposal for Lincoln
College to teach Soil Science at the University of Canterbury is the extreme goodwill and helpfulness
on both sides. Everybody was trying to be helpful and achieve the best outcome for students and both
universities. There is no suggestion at all of any intent to compete with each other which was such a
feature of the NZ universities in more recent years. It is very refreshing.
Professor Peter McKelvey was the key person in establishing the relationship with Lincoln and he
continued to be particularly supportive after teaching began, dealing quickly and effectively with
several teething problems that arose in the early years. Subsequent Professors of Forestry, Deans of
Forestry and Heads of the School of Forestry (Geoff Sweet, Roger Sands, John Allen, John Walker,
Ron O’Reilly, and Bruce Manley) continued to be very supportive.
55

New Zealand School of Forestry
The Soil Science Papers and Changes through the Years
1. 1969-1974 Soil Science I 161A & 161B
This was the initial form in which the paper was offered. It was a one unit, whole-year paper with 3
lectures and 1 four-hour laboratory class per week (72 hours lectures and 96 hours labs). It was
examined in two papers covering the following prescriptions:
Paper 161A Geology, mineralogy and geomorphology as related to soil formation. Soil forming
factors and processes. The morphology and pattern of NZ soils. Soils in the ecosystem.
Paper 161B The soil properties which influence tree growth. Diagnosis and correction of nutrient
deficiencies. Forest influences on soil stabilization and on water yield and purity.
The paper was examined in two 3-hour examinations, covering 161A and 161B respectively.
2. 1975-1980 Soil Science SOIL 101
This change in title and coding arose from a change in the BSc degree structure to a points structure
compared with the previous units structure. It now became a 12 point paper with lecture and
laboratory hours remaining unchanged. The paper was still examined in two 3-hour examinations
covering the same prescriptions as for the 161 paper above except that the first paper now included a
section on soils as a natural resource and an introduction to world soils. This reflected the interests of
Eddie Cutler who was the main lecturer in that first paper.
3. 1981-1992 Soil Science SOIL 201
Ever since its introduction, the soils paper had been oddly placed as a Stage 1 unit, in that it could not
be taken in a student’s first year, because it had a prerequisite of Chemistry I. Also, it had been taught
at an academic level much more compatible with a Stage 2 paper. In 1980, the opportunity was taken
56

to suggest a change to this anomaly and this was agreed to by the Faculty of Science. It remained as a
12 point paper but lectures increased to 4 hours per week with one
4-hour laboratory. It was still examined in two 3-hour examinations but with changed prescriptions
reflecting its upgraded status.
SOIL 201A Geology, mineralogy and geomorphology as related to soil formation. Soil-forming
factors and processes. Chemical and physical properties of soils. Soil surveys and soil survey
interpretation. Soil classification.
SOIL 201B Soil conditions, physical, chemical and biological that influence plant growth. Nutrient
cycling. Diagnosis of nutrient deficiencies and their correction by the use of fertilisers.
Influence of forests and forest management on soil properties.
4. 1993-2002 SOIL 202 Soil Properties and Processes
SOIL 203 Soil Fertility
During the 1980’s at the University of Canterbury, a change was occurring from large 12 point papers
to smaller 6 point units in the BSc. This gave students greater flexibility in developing their degrees
and was also associated with a gradual change to semesterisation of teaching. By about 1990, SOIL
201 was one of about two remaining 12 point papers. Consequently, it was decided to seek a split into
two 6 point papers to be taught respectively in the first and second halves of the year (the University
was at this stage unwilling to use the word “semesters”).
This proposal was accepted and the resulting papers were SOIL 202 and SOIL 203. Effectively, things
remained pretty much as they had been for SOIL 201 (eg lecture and laboratory hours remained as
they had been for SOIL 201) with SOIL 202 being taught and examined in the first half of the year and
SOIL 203 being taught and examined in the second half.
The opportunity was taken to upgrade the prescriptions of the two papers as follows:
SOIL 202 Soil Properties and Processes Soil forming factors and processes. Soil-landform
relationships and soil surveys. Mineralogical, physical and chemical properties of New Zealand soils.
SOIL 203 Soil Fertility Chemical, physical and biological properties that influence plant growth.
Nutrient deficiencies and fertiliser use.
5. 2003 SOIL 202 discontinued
Over several years, New Zealand forestry had undergone a marked change in emphasis from
establishing and growing trees to their harvesting and utilisation. Discussion within the School of
Forestry led to a change in the BForSc degree structure with the consequent effect that, from 1999,
only one of the two soils paper (SOIL 202) was compulsory though SOIL 203 was still included in
the degree schedule but as an optional paper. Inevitably this led to a drop in student numbers in SOIL
203 from 1999 onwards as some BForSc students understandably opted for other papers, in commerce
particularly.
By 2002 numbers in SOIL 203 had dropped to 12 which was too low to be viable. In addition the
BForSc schedule was changed again, removing SOIL 203 as an optional alternative from 2003. All of
this meant that only one soils paper was going to be viable. Peter Almond who had been the main
lecturer in SOIL 202 since 1991 wanted to be relieved of that teaching while John Adams who was the
main lecturer in SOIL 203 was happy to continue with that paper. Consequently, SOIL 202 was
discontinued as from 2003 and SOIL 203 became the only soil science paper offered, replacing SOIL
202 as the compulsory soils paper for the BForSc degree.
57

BE (Forestry) degree
This separate stream of the Bachelor of Engineering began in 1993 with the aim of producing
graduates to fulfill roles in foresting harvesting and utilisation. From its beginning this degree has had
a compulsory soils paper in its schedule, initially SOIL 202 and then SOIL 203 from 2003.
Lincoln Staff Involved in the Programme
Initially the paper was taught by Professor Walker, Arthur Adams and Eddie Cutler. In 1977, a year
after his appointment to the Lincoln staff, John Adams took over from Walker and Adams and he
continued to be the main lecturer in the soil fertility sections of SOIL 101, SOIL 201 and SOIL 203
until his retirement at the end of 2006. The main lecturers in the pedology area were Eddie Cutler from
1969 until his retirement in 1984 followed by Phil Tonkin and then Peter Almond from about 1991
until the discontinuation of SOIL 202 at the end of 2002. Alistair Campbell taught the mineralogical
and soil chemistry sections for many years and Graeme Buchan delivered the soil physics section of
the fertility papers from 1986 until 2006. Prior to that, from 1981, Jeff Reid did this section. In recent
years, Roger McLenaghen ran the laboratory classes in SOIL 203 and assisted Peter Almond in SOIL
202.
Students
Student numbers have varied through the years. From 1969 until 1992 when the paper was split into
two, numbers ranged from about 25 to 50 per year (Figure 1). BForSc students have made up around
two-thirds of the class for many years so numbers have tended to follow the fortunes of the NZ
forestry sector, which has a marked impact on BForSc enrolments. Perhaps the clearest example of
this was from 1986 to 1989 when numbers dropped from 52 in 1986 to a very low 14 in 1989 (Figure
1). This followed the then Labour Government’s decision to disestablish the NZ Forest Service and
begin the sell-off of many of NZ’s state forests. Public perception of Forestry obviously improved
quite sharply though as by 1992 numbers in the soils paper were back up to 50.
Figure 1 Student numbers in SOIL 161 (1969-1974),
SOIL101 (1975-1980) and SOIL 201 (1981-1992)
60
50
Student numbers
40
30
20
10
0
1969 1972 1975 1978 1981 1984 1987 1990
Year
Student numbers continued to increase reaching a maximum of 77 in SOIL 202 in 1997 (Figure 2).
Numbers were usually slightly lower in SOIL 203, mainly because BSc students enrolled in somewhat
greater numbers in SOIL 202. With the change to SOIL 203 being optional for BForSc students from
1999, SOIL 203 numbers fell away each year to be only 12 in 2002 (Figure 2) and it was at this point
that the decision was made to withdraw the SOIL 202 paper.
58

Figure 2 Student numbers in SOIL 202 (1993-2002)
and SOIL 203 (1993-2006)
Student numbers
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
SOIL 202
SOIL 203
0
1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005
Year
In total, nearly 2000 students enrolled in soils papers over the period 1969 to 2006.
Student surveys over the years indicated that students found the papers challenging. This was
particularly the case when SOIL 202 was introduced. Many of the more academically able students
really enjoyed the intellectual challenge that SOIL 202 presented but others were not so sure!
Despite the student perception that these were quite difficult papers, pass rates were always good,
particularly for SOIL 203 but they were a little lower for SOIL 202. Many very able students took the
papers over the years, including past and present foresters. Some students carried on to careers in Soil
Science including David Wardle, Phil Hart, Peter Clinton and Kate Orwin. Others such as Barry
Maister (Secretary General of the NZ Olympic Committee) and David Simmons (Professor of
Tourism at Lincoln University) took different paths.
The End of the Programme
In 2006, with John Adams’ retirement pending, debate within the Soil and Physical Sciences Group at
Lincoln University took place over whether they wished to continue offering to teach Soil Science at
the University of Canterbury. Nobody was keen to take over and there were also administrative issues
about the funding of the programme. In fact funding arrangements had quite often been unclear to
successive Heads of the Department of Soil Science and the Soil and Physical Sciences Group pretty
much since 1969, in part because funding had not been handled by them but by the university
administration. In any event, the decision was made to withdraw from the programme as from the start
of 2007 and this decision was formally conveyed to the University of Canterbury by Dr Chris Kirk,
Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Lincoln University in August 2006.
The Future
Soil Science is still being taught at the University of Canterbury. The School of Forestry contracted
John Adams to deliver a modified SOIL 203 Soil Fertility paper in 2007 and 2008 with a probable
extension to 2009. The new paper is shorter than previously with a prescription which includes a
significant section on soil formation, soil processes and New Zealand soils. It is still a compulsory
paper for BForSc and BE (Forestry) students and is also available for BSc students.
This is really an interim arrangement and it remains to be seen whether or in what form any future
delivery of a paper in Soil Science takes place. Given the burgeoning recognition of Soil Science as an
integral part of so many other areas of science, it is to be hoped that its continuation will be possible.
59

News from correspondents
AgResearch Ruakura
Most of the Ruakura based Soil Science team is gearing up for an intensive winter research
programme dealing with minimisation of nitrate leaching, evaluations of N2O mitigation options,
quantification of dissolved organic matter from pastoral soils.
Soil scientist numbers are dwindling at AgResearch Ruakura campus. Dr Mike Dodd has decided to
move southwards. He will be joining Dr Paul Newton's team at Grasslands working on the root
dynamics in perennial pastures.
Dr Anwar Ghani has completed his 4 year term as the Technical Committee member at the New
Zealand Land Treatment Collective. Dr Jaifa Luo has replaced Anwar as the new technical committee
member.
Drs Anwar Ghani, Jaifa Luo, Andrea Donnison and Colleen Ross gave presentations at this years
Land Treatment Annual Conference recently held in Queenstown. Andrea Donnison and Colleen
Ross poster paper was judged the best poster presentation at this conference.
Soils team at Ruakura has welcomed arrival of Dr Mark Sheppard who has recently joined at
AgResearch as a senior Scientist in the Climate, Land and Environment Section. He will be leading
Nitrogen cycling and loss with pastoral system programme. Prior to joining AgResearch, Mark headed
the ADAS Catchment Management Group, until December 2007 which undertakes British National
and International research-based consultancy relating to all aspects of the interaction of land
management and water quality. His specialist research area is nutrient management in agricultural
systems with an emphasis on decreased environmental impact.
Ruakura "Diggers" have started well in the local volleyball competition, winning their first game
convincingly.
Invermay
Tony van der Weerden has assumed a position at AgResearch Invermay as a senior scientist and
started in February this year. Tony will be working on several MAF-funded projects, mainly in the
area of the national nitrous oxide inventory, focusing on future scenarios and implications of the 2006
guidelines. Tony will also be developing an automated chamber system to allow for more frequent
measurement of nitrous oxide emissions.
M.S Srinivasan recently left the Climate Land and Environment team at Invermay to assume a
position as a hydrologist based at NIWA in Christchurch. M.S’s contribution toward ‘critical source
area’ research will be missed, as will his participation in the Invermay office cricket competition!
Cecile de Klein has recently been entertaining politicians (John Key, David Carter and Paul
Hutchinson) as part of a recent National Party visit to Lincoln where she presented an overview of the
AgResearch water and climate change research programmes. Cecile also recently convened a two-day
science/extension forum under the P21 Environment programme designed to improve
interaction/communication between science and extension. The forum was attended by key industry
extension staff, farm leaders, scientists (including Ross Monaghan, Richard Muirhead and Richard
McDowell from Invermay), advisory group members and investors.
60

David Houlbrooke and Richard Muirhead have been on the road speaking at some recent field days
on the management of farm dairy effluent. Field days were held near Gore and Balclutha as part of
initiatives from Fonterra and Environment Southland (Gore field day) and the Otago Regional Council
(Balclutha). Dairy effluent continues to be a difficult compliance issue for many farms on many
rolling topography’s, mole and pipe drained soils and poorly drained soils, particularly in the southern
regions of the South island. Dave Houlbrooke has also been working on informing policy around
‘best management practices’ for dairy effluent for Horizons Regional Council and together with Ross
Monaghan for Environment Southland. Ross Monaghan has also been involved in the testing and
training of the soon to be related updated version of Overseer nutrient budgets® model
Richard McDowell attended the 11 th international symposium on ‘Interactions between sediment and
water’ held in Esperance, Western Australia. Richard presented a paper entitled ‘Effects of wetting
and drying cycles on phosphorus forms in sediments from upland streams in South Otago, New
Zealand’. Of course Rich took some time off after the conference to travel through the Mt Barker and
Margaret river wine growing regions!
Nth Otago LUCI programme field research site during drought conditions
Along with the rest of the country, Otago
has been effected by a long period of dry
weather which has highlighted country that
has irrigation water compared for country
that does not. In order to capture some
images of this production difference, some
Invermay staff (Dave Houlbrooke, M.S
Srinivasan and Sonya Walker) recently
jumped into a small plane and took photos
of the LUCI programme field research site
in North Otago (see photo below). For
those unsure, the plots with green pasture
are the irrigated ones and the brown ones
are dryland plots.
Massey University
Loga Loganathan and Jeya Jeyakumar attended the New Zealand Trace Elements Group
Conference in Hamilton from 13 to 15 February. Loga presented an oral paper on ‘Accumulation,
dynamics and risks of fertiliser-derived fluorine in grazed pastures - a review’ (co-authors: Mike
Hedley and Neville Grace (AgResearch)). Jeya presented an oral paper on his PhD research, ‘Copper
and zinc fractionation and speciation in sewage sludge amended with metals’ (co-authors: Loga
Loganathan, Siva Sivakumaran (Hort Research), Chris Anderson and Ron McLaren (Lincoln
University)).
Dr. Károly Németh from the Soil and Earth Sciences, Volcanic Risk Solutions research group spent
two weeks in Argentina at the end of February. The primary aim of the trip was a crucial board
meeting of the key members of the scientific and organising committee of the Third International
MAAR Conference in association with IAVCEI and IAS (www.3imc.org). This meeting took place at
the conference site in Malargüe in Mendoza Province. A trip was organised to view the provisional
sites the participants would visit for the proposed future conference field trips. These two trips will
take people to a large and very young volcanic field (Llancanelo Volcanic Field and Payun Matru
volcanic complex) behind the active volcanic arc of the Cordillera of the Andes. Our provisional
viewing took place in a four wheel drive vehicle over 600 km in a single day. This will surely be
61

enough excitement for the field trip participants besides the extraordinary landscape and volcanic
features they can visit.
Payun Matru – young scoria cones and ash fields
front of the Payun Matru caldera
Well preserved crater of the Los Loros volcano
An additional goal of Dr Nemeth’s trip was to visit an unusual, relatively young and small (1 km
crater diameter), well-preserved volcano in southern Mendoza (Los Loros). This site has generated
quite some interest and further collaborative work between Massey and Buenos Aires Universities will
target similar volcanoes in the vast land of the deserts of southern Mendoza. The first results from this
research will be presented during the GSNZ Annual Meeting in Wellington this year and perhaps
during the Third International MAAR Conference. Besides the excellent geology, Argentina always
provides a fun and very unusual working environment, just what geologists look for. In addition, the
excellent red wines of Malbec, Temprillano or Merlot and the nice cold beers of the Andes and
Quilmes, combined with a perfect asado (Argentine flame grill), in beautiful surroundings, with good
people, are certainly the perfect combination to open our mind for science and life.
The 21 st Annual Workshop held by the Fertilizer and Lime Research Centre (FLRC) on the 13 th and
14 th of February was very a well attended and productive event. Fifty eight papers were presented in
the two-day Workshop. There were 235 registrants representing universities, CRI’s, fertiliser industry,
private consultancies, regional councils and national policy-makers in New Zealand. Keynote
presentations were given by Dr Kevin Tate, Landcare Research, Palmerston North, Professor Kenneth
Cassman, University of Nebraska and Dr John Gaunt, GY Associates Ltd, Harpenden, UK. Dr Gaunt
was unable to be with us in person. He presented his keynote paper and contributed to the discussion
via a live video link from Cornell University, New York. This was a new initiative for the FLRC
Workshop but proved to be a very successful way of including an international perspective without
having a speaker physically present. All presenters, invited and voluntary, contributed to a very
worthwhile programme and lively debate ensued during the discussion sessions over the two days of
oral and poster presentations. Many papers were following up on projects and initiatives that had been
signalled at earlier FLRC Workshops, and one of the great attributes of this event is the continuity that
is apparent over the two days, and in the published proceedings. In previous FLRC Workshops we
had focussed sessions looking at issues around Lake Taupo and the Rotorua Lakes. There were two
papers this year that gave updates on issues in the Environment BOP region, a farmer and a science
perspective on minimising nitrogen and phosphorus entering Rotorua Lakes. A whole session was
devoted to papers and discussion around the ‘One-Plan’, the Regional Plan and Policy Statement from
Horizons Regional Council (Manawatu- Wanganui) which is currently the subject of (lively)
community consultation.
62

Scion
We have two new people in our group. Marie Heaphy is a graduate of Waikato University, obtaining
a BSc in Earth Sciences and Resources and Environmental Planning in April 2007. Having completed
her Masters papers at the University of Waikato, she decided to take up full-time employment at Scion
as a technician in Waste Management and hopes to complete her MSc part-time over the next two
years. A former NZ State Registered Nurse, Marie travelled extensively throughout Asia and Europe
and took time out to work as a safari guide in East and Southern Africa. Having witnessed the
degradation of land, due to over-grazing and deforestation in developing countries, Marie chose to
study soil science with a view to contributing to sustainable solutions to these universal problems.
Johnny Regnier is a six-month appointed Sciences, Mathematics and Technology Teacher Fellow. He
is a Biotechnology teacher in Ngaruawahia. Johnny will be investigating vermiculture in New Zealand
as a means of sustainable waste treatment. Hosted by Michael Quintern from Scion, Johnny is
involved in setting up and monitoring research field trials to investigate the efficiency of using
vermicomposting as a means of dealing with biosolids from local waste treatment plants and other
primary industrial and environmental wastes. The opportunity to work alongside scientists will give
Johnny an insight into scientific research to share with his students and colleagues.
Guna Magesan and Hailong Wang have just completed the final report on N leaching from gorse.
They are looking forward to working on more water quality related projects.
HortResearch
Steve Green and Brent Clothier are working on a 2-year contract with the CRC CARE
(Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment) in Australia, through Euan Smith
of the University of South Australia in Adelaide, to model the transport and fate of heavy metals and
DDT in soil-vegetable systems. Steve and Brent spent the first week of April in Adelaide working
with Euan on designing the structure and framework for the decision support tool that will be powered
by SPASMO (Soil Plant Atmosphere System Model).
We farewell Gerd Wessolek from the Technical University Berlin, who returned to Germany. Gerd
worked with Markus Deurer on hydrophobicity of soils. Stéfanie Roulier from the Soil Protection
Group at the Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zurich returned to Switzerland.
Marlies Schijf from the Amsterdam University, Netherlands is currently touring NZ and will return in
May to continue her internship on looking at the effect of soil carbon on hydrophobicity and hydraulic
functioning of soils.
Felix Witing from the University of Dresden, Germany, is continuing his work on wastewater
And phosphorus movement in soils and will be working with us until June.
SLU Activities
Brent Clothier is the Joint Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s international journal “Agricultural Water
Management”. Every so often Elsevier holds an all-Editors’ meeting somewhere in Asia for its Asia-
Pacific Editors. This was recently held in Singapore over the weekend of 23-24 February, and some
250 Editors attended for the meeting entitled “Excellence in Science Communication”. These
meetings are very informative for Elsevier relates its perceptions of what is over the horizon in relation
to science publishing, and often Elsevier (dominating the 2000 publishers with their revenue of
$1.5B/yr in a $9B/yr science-publishing business) is actually creating that horizon. Key points to
come out were:
63

o Publications, and publication quality, from China and Brazil are presently rising at 10% and 8%
(respectively) per annum, compared to just a 3% rise in publications in the US. China now
publishes as many papers as Germany.
o Because of searchable databases, since 2005, scientists are now spending 5% less time searching
for information, and spending 5% more time reading articles. Furthermore, scientists are now
reading 25% more papers, and reading articles from twice as many journals
o Elsevier is going beyond simply a content provider to a workplace-tools designer and operator,
especially in the health and medical sciences
o Despite pressures from Open Access (author pays) journals, there is still a strong demand for the
peer reviewed, subscription journals that Elsevier publishes. Editors and referees are, Elsevier
considers, the imprimaturs of quality, and in return Elsevier is increasingly providing them with
editorial, database and software support
o Elsevier is developing blog and social networking tools for they see a future in tapping into the
‘wisdom of the crowd’. Elsevier have just established a wiki website for Topic Pages where
contemporary issues can be discussed and new knowledge updated through a web portal. As
well, they are setting up a “Live Chat” on-line forum for discussion of editorial matters between
authors and editors.
o Elsevier is developing a PERK website (Publishing Ethics Resource Kit) to assist Editors by
provision of policy, software tools and template letters in order to deal with unethical behaviours
such as plagiarism, multiple publication, inappropriate authorships, and fraud.
Crop & Food
After 21 years at Crop and Food Glyn Francis decided it was time to move on to something a little
different. He has taken up a position of section manager of the Biocontrol, Biosecurity &
Bioprocessing group at AgResearch. Glyn started with MAF in 1986 without a budget or any
technical assistance after completing his PhD at Lincoln University. He successfully made a name for
himself and became the leader of the Soil Team in Crop and Food, Lincoln producing many reputable
papers, journals, presentations and reports. Glyn will be missed but his new residence is only six
offices down the hallway.
A laboratory in the Soil Team has been taken from the 80’s and refurbished recently with new vinyl,
paint, benches and cupboards designed to contain the majority of the instruments the team owns in a
temperature controlled clean environment. The team is very pleased with the result and is looking
forward to working in the lab.
Congratulations to Kate Scott who has been working away completing soil papers while working full
time and has just completed her Graduate Certificate in Applied Science (with Distinction)
Changes have been occurring at Crop and Food recently with a restructure. This has meant that the
Soil and Agronomy teams have been mixed up to make four new teams, Soil, Water and
Environments, Agronomy and Modelling teams. This restructure will ensure tighter collaboration
between teams spreading skills and knowledge.
Erin Lawrence attended the 21 st Annual Fertiliser and Lime Research Centre conference in
Palmerston North recently presenting a poster titled “Quantifying the effects of soil and crop
management history on soil quality”.
Environment Waikato
Reece Hill, Matthew Taylor, Wim Rijkse, Ross Abercrombie and Paul Smith recently toured the
Waipapa catchment in the Upper Waikato to identify sites that demonstrate the areas soils. After
letting Wim loose it was only a question of time before there were freshed up faces on all the road
64

cuttings. Taupo, Aitiamuri and Oruanui (Pumice), Ngakuru (Allophanic) and Tihoi soils (Podzol) were
all inspected. Tephra, ignimbrite, lapilli and water sorted pumice formations were all admired. Of
particular interest was a farm suffering from surface compaction and loss of production. The turf and
root mat peeled off the soil like peeling the skin off a mandarin.
Wim and Reece discussing Taupo Ignimbrite
Severe surface compaction.
Matthew, Wim, Bryan Stevenson and Danny Thornburrow have been busy collecting samples for
the soil quality monitoring programme. This work has been supplemented by an additional study;
Infiltration of water into soil under forestry and agriculture. The results from this study have been
submitted to Soil News (Feb 2008, p6-10). Another paper discussing trace element soil chemistry has
been presented at the NZ Trace Elements Group Conference in Hamilton in February (See our
abstract).
Lincoln Environmental Research
Introducing a novel technique to measure fluxes and sample pore water in the vadose zone hasn’t
come without challenges for the Hamilton team of LER. The porous stainless steel plates that form the
heart of the ‘Automated Equilibrium Tension Plate Lysimeters (AETPLs)’ installed at the Spydia
monitoring system near Lake Taupo didn’t perform as anticipated. Model simulations undertaken by
Thomas “Eddy” Wöhling confirmed our suspicion that the plates were not giving realistic estimates
of the fluxes through the vadose zone. The filter fabrics used on top of the plates proved the main
problem, but maintaining plate saturation and hydraulic sealing posed additional challenges.
Consequently, all AETPLs were removed from the site, modified, tested and re-installed. This major
task has recently been successfully completed, much to the relief of those involved: Aaron Wall and
Brian Moorhead in the field and in the workshop, Greg Barkle and Juliet Clague in the lab, and
Eddy providing background support. The Spydia project contributes to the Integrated Research for
Aquifer Protection (IRAP) partnership, on which further info is available at http://www.irap.org.nz/.
In the meantime, much more profane challenges were encountered by Aaron, Brian and Roland
Stenger in the Toenepi catchment, where we apparently used our coring gear beyond its limits. A
digger had to be contracted to retrieve our split window corer from more than 6m below ground
surface when a stainless steel nipple broke. Luckily, the farmer affected was very relaxed about the big
65

hole the digger made in his paddock. It was great to see his on-going support for our work even in
difficult circumstances!
Lincoln University
After 37 years at Lincoln University Prof. Kuan Goh (Professor of Soil Science) officially retired on
February 28. A farewell function was held in the Kauri Room at Lincoln University to mark this
significant event. A separate article will appear in a later edition of Soil News.
The Group also farewelled Dr Suzie Reichman, who resigned for personal reasons to take up a
position at the Environmental Protection Agency, Victoria, Australia. In the 2 years Suzie was in the
Group, she made a significant contribution to both teaching and research; most recently in leading the
successful bid for the state-of-the-art ICP-OES which now resides in the Group.
Lincoln University Soil Science Prize Winners for 2007
and Staff Members at Prize Giving Ceremony on 28 February 2008.
Left to Right: Graeme Buchan, Ron McLaren, Roger McLenaghen, Rob Sherlock, Peter Almond,
Simon Abel (1 st equal @ 100 level), Cameron Ludemann (3 rd @ 300 level), Nicola Kelland (1 st @ 200
level), Richard Dekker (1 st @ 300 level), Keith Cameron, Jim Moir, Tzer-Yang Yu (1 st equal @ 100
level).
Student Prize Winners absent: Hugh Jackson (2 nd @ 100 level), Kieran O’Brien (3 rd @ 100 level),
Diane Loader (2 nd @ 200 level), Sean Gresham (3 rd @ 200 level), and Cameron Craine (2 nd @ 300
level).
Each year prizes are awarded to the top three Soil Science students. The prizes recognise the
excellence achieved by these top students and encourage them to continue to perform at the highest
level. The students receive a Prize Certificate and book tokens. Many of the previous prize winners
have gone on to study for Honours, Masters and PhD degrees leading to careers in industry, farming,
CRIs, regional councils, and government ministries.
66

The Group welcomed new research associates and postgraduate students. Dr Peter Jewell has joined
Rob Sherlock and Tim Clough on a MAF Policy-funded "desktop review" of various emission
factors associated with New Zealand's nitrous oxide emissions inventory. Peter has a PhD from the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich where he investigated the "Impact of cattle grazing
upon vegetation of an Alpine pasture".
Laura Buckthought has rejoined the Soils Group after a period working for the International
Consulting Group URS. Laura completed her honours degree here last year. She will initially be
working with Tim Clough to complete some nitrous oxide research on the LII river and then some
MAF-Policy related work before embarking on a PhD. Pranoy Pal is a PhD student who will be
working with Tim Clough and Frank Kelliher. Pranoy comes from Gujarat, in India where he
completed a Masters thesis. His PhD topic will focus on denitrification and greenhouse gas emissions
in pasture soils. Arezoo Taghizadeh Toosi is a PhD student from Iran. She will be working with Leo
Condron, Rob Sherlock and Tim Clough on the effects of bio-char amendment on soil physical
conditions, microbial activity and greenhouse gas emissions.
Latoya Grant is a BAgSc Honours student who will be working on microbial and nutrient dynamics
in the rhizosphere of green manure crops. She will be supervised by Leo Condron. Nathan Patton
is a BAgSc Honours student who will be working on factors affecting arsenic uptake by pasture
species with Ron McLaren.
Two of Leo Condron’s PhD students recently presented their PhD Proposal Seminars on the 28 March.
Gina Lucci presented her seminar on 'Tracing critical source areas of phosphorus and sediment in
grassland catchments'. Fiona Curran-Cournane presented her seminar on 'Impacts of livestock
treading on soil physical properties and subsequent phosphorus and sediment losses'. Both Gina and
Fiona are based at AgResearch Invermay, working with Dr. Richard McDowell.
In February, Amanda Black, Ron McLaren and Dan Reissler (sabattical visitor from The Earth and
Environmental Sciences Group at Susquehanna University, Pennsylvania) attended the Trace
Elements Group Conference Hamilton, where Amanda presented a paper “Evaluating the use of DGT-
DIFS to measure Cd, Cu, Ni and Zn plant availability in soils treated with biosolids and metal salts”.
Also in February, Leo Condron attended the Fertilizer and Lime Research Centre workshop on
carbon and nutrient management in agriculture at Massey University.
AgResearch Grasslands
Grant Douglas and HortResearch scientists have commenced a trial to determine the effect of
pollarding 8 year-old spaced poplar trees on root development, and the implications for soil stability.
The trial is part of the FRST-funded SLURI programme, is being conducted on a farm near Feilding in
Manawatu, and is planned to last for eight years. The root systems of two trees are being excavated
this autumn for baseline data and treatments (pollarding to 2.5 m above ground, control treatment) will
be imposed this winter. Pollarding will be repeated in 2012, together with further excavations of trees,
and final excavations will be conducted in 2016.
Pollarding spaced trees is increasingly recommended to prevent them from becoming 'monsters' which
can dramatically reduce understory pasture production, and they have the potential to topple during
storm events or as they age. Toppled trees or broken branches are a liability to livestock,
infrastructure (buildings, tracks, fences), and even farmers. Pollarding trees every 3-5 years seems to
be a satisfactory compromise between retaining a reasonable sized tree for effective soil conservation,
minimising pasture losses, and reducing labour required for pollarding. In drought-prone areas,
pollarding in autumn can also be useful for providing supplementary feed for livestock.
67

Partially excavated roots of a poplar tree aged 11 years
Photo supplied by Grant Douglas
Phil Theobald conducted a field trail at Grasslands to evaluate effectiveness of commercial products
developed to minimise ammonia volatilization from pastures. Phil had to overcome many challenges
including weather to set up the experiment and to carry out necessary soil and gas sampling.
Alec Mackay , with Phil Budding doing most of the work, are investigating the impact of strategic
irrigation on the seasonal distribution and annual production of pasture and forage crops in summer
dry rolling and hill land from water harvested during winter and early spring rainfall events that
generated run-off and stored behind earth dams built across wide-low valleys. The study sheep and
beef farms in the Southern Wairarapa started back in 2005 is funded by Ballance Agri-Nutrients
Limited was started back in 2005. This study is providing valuable data for farmers and their advisors
to assess the impact of irrigation on the seasonal and annual distribution of pasture production, pasture
quality and water use efficiencies, all of which are key inputs for determining the optimum
specifications for the dam and irrigation system and use of the additional feed in the farm operation.
Phil Budding downloading datalogger
that records rainfall using a tipping
bucket
Photo courtesy of Ross Gray
68

No it’s not Australia!
Contrast between
irrigated and non
irrigated area in South
Wairarapa
Australia
News from University of South Australia – March 2008
Nanthi has taken over the role of Dean of Graduate Studies of UniSA. UniSA is the largest of the three
South Australian universities with an annual operating budget of approximately $405 million. Of
34,700 students, around 6,600 study in other countries and over 1,100 are research degree students.
The University is a dynamic research organisation and has twenty-one multidisciplinary research
institutes and centres located across its five metropolitan and regional campuses.
One more PhD student, Mr Girish Choppala will be joining Nanthi and Prof Ravi Naidu working on
Passive Reactive Barriers. Dr Kwon Rae Kim has joined our group as a Postdoc working on Cleanup
Park – an international demonstration site.
Seth has organised the Australian Soil Science Society’s (SA Branch) next informal ‘beer and pizza’
evening on the 8 th May 2008, at UniSA, Mawson Lakes. Guest speakers will be giving a short
presentation on the theme of ‘Recycled Water Use in Horticulture’
NZSSS
Minutes of a meeting of the NZSSS Council held on Friday 15th February
2008 at 10am in the Fitzherbert Room at AgResearch, Grasslands in
Palmerston North.
Present:
A.Mackay (Chair); B. Clothier; A. Hewitt; R. McLenaghen; C. de Klein; P. Fraser
(Minutes); G. Magesan; I. Vogeler; I. Vanderkolk; L. Schipper, J. Adams.
Apologies: P. Singleton
Minutes of previous Meeting:
“That the minutes of the November meeting be confirmed as a true and accurate record”
Chair - carried
Matters arising from Minutes:
• Storage space on the web – sufficient capacity is available.
69

• Nomination information was supplied by John.
• Guna sent conference info to Massey.
Matters for general business
• ANZSSPEF – (to be returned as regular item to the main agenda)
• Environment NZ report
• Vince Neall to attend to discuss progress with conference 2008
• Plan to have significant discussion on Hidden Universe
• IUSS
Approval of Agenda
It was moved “that the agenda be approved”
Chair – carried
Treasury
The Treasurer tabled her reports for the last 2 periods (as they were not available at the last meeting).
Financial Report 21 August 2007 to 12 February 2008
Income
Subscriptions $ 15,216.54
Book sales $ 4,195.00
Total $ 19,411.54
Payments
Postage $ 224.87
Postage Soil New $ 589.50
Council Travel $ 1,881.76
Printing & Binding Soil News $ 2,586.70
Teleconferences for November $ 282.60
SITNZL postage $ 344.18
Prof Walker DVD $ 1,500.00
Norman Taylor Expenses $ 220.01
PhD and MSc Awards $ 500.00
Auditing $ 200.00
Government Cheque Duty $ 2.50
Total $ 8,332.12
Comments on report:
• Council travel seems higher due to large accumulated bill from Lincoln.
• More invoices to come for Norman Taylor expenses.
• Payment to auditor included.
• DVD expenses included.
• A large proportion of the income from subscriptions as expected.
Cecile de Klein
15 February 2008
“That the payments listed be approved”
C. de Klein/ J. Adams - carried
Discussion arose about introducing a multi-year membership option – but too many difficulties were
perceived.
70

Sending out of bills needs to be refined to make the task less onerous for Treasurer.
Action: Secretary and Treasurer to explore whether database could be used to assist with this.
A vote of thanks was proposed for all Cecile’s efforts.
Membership:
As at 12 February 2008:
Members
Soil News
Ordinary members 261 Library Subscriptions 16
Student members 51 Free copies 7
Corporate members 1 Total 23
Honorary members 8
Retired members 32
Life members 12
Total 365 Grand total 388
Membership changes since last meeting:
New members:
Jim Paton, AgR Invermay.
Coby Hoogendoorn, AgR Grasslands, P. North.
Georg Kruger (Undergrad award winner), Waikato Uni.
It was moved “that applications for membership from those listed above be approved”.
P. Fraser/ J. Adams - carried
Resignations:
Matt Redding
It was moved “that this resignation be accepted”.
Addresses Currently Unknown:
Katie Beecroft – Guna was able to supply.
Sarah O’Hagan – Brent was able to supply.
P. Fraser/ J. Adams - carried
Soil News:
- Nearly got next issue finished.
- Abstracts from FLRC have been included.
- Norman Taylor written version to be included too.
- Feed back from members have been favourable with respect to photos in Soil News.
- Please send abstracts from relevant conferences to Iris.
Soil News distribution list
The Secretary recently sent an email to those members (for whom we have an email address) who had
either not previously indicated their preference for receiving a hard copy or electronic copy of Soil
News, or who had previously indicated they wanted a hard copy of Soil News to ask them to consider
changing to the electronic version. The majority of respondents were happy to now change to
receiving an electronic version and since the email was sent in early February, 93 more members have
now elected to receive Soil News electronically instead of in hard copy. Six respondents elected to
remain with receiving hard copies. These changes alone will provide annual savings in copying and
postage costs of around $1300 for the Society plus there will be additional savings in Isabelle’s time as
far fewer issues will need to be copied and posted. There are still about 50 members who have yet not
responded to the email request and we also have about 50 members who either do not have email
facilities or who have not supplied us with a current email address.
71

It is generally expected that new members will from now on receive Soil News electronically unless
hard copy is specifically requested.
Action: Secretary to appropriately amend the membership application form to reflect this change.
NZSSS WWW pages
It was moved “that some money be provided for up to 2 hours per month to assist with adding material
to the web site”.
I Vogeler/ A. Mackay - carried
SITNZL
NZSC additional supplement
A request has been made to buy a number in bulk.
It was moved “that they may be purchased at $5 a copy”.
R. McLenaghen/ J. Adams – carried
Action : Roger to add comment into Soil News about their availability to members.
Awards:
Slight amendments are needed to Fellowship and Blakemore award rules.
Action: Trish to circulate suggested amendments.
Comment was made that none of our awards currently cover areas like services to soil science policy /
soil science promotion in the community etc.
Norman Taylor Lecture – good feedback has come through on its novel delivery and approach.
NZSSS Fellowship nominations
We can award up to 4 this year. A number of potential candidates were suggested and champions were
identified to progress nominations further.
RSNZ Fellowships
We only have one nomination still live and these have both been revised and resubmitted for this year.
Revision for this is underway.
Action: Alec to contact other suggested nominee.
New Award – LI Grange – championed by David Lowe
Extensive discussion arose. There was full agreement that Grange would be an appropriate person to
have an award named after him.
Concerns about the eligibility of the award in its current form; the current focus seemed a bit narrow,
so that few people would qualify and it seems to similar to the current Leamy Award. Suggestions
were made to widen the coverage, with less focus on the academic side and more on the focus on
recognising contribution to landscapes.
Action: Louis to follow up with David.
AJSR
Loius is now on the AJSR Editorial Committee.
Action: Alec to explore with Jenny Fegent about the potential of her giving an overview of paper
writing at a forthcoming conference.
Promoting Soil Science
VSA in schools
Feedback has been very positive so far. Comments from various quarters have been received and a
number of modifications are under way.
72

Hidden Universe update
Met with Joule last year and defined the objectives: To develop a roadshow with a series of messages.
Batina Anderson (of Green Rig) helped Ian Kennedy (then of Joule) to put together a selling
document.
Agmardt were approached for support. They do not want to be a major sponsor, but were keen to
provide some seed funding and to help with “introductions” to other companies etc. Joule is closing up
soon, so a detailed email of all possible directions that we could take with this project was provided by
them. Ian Kennedy is now involved with the NZ Roadshow Trust and is keen to further help the
project progress. Sub-committee opted to go with the Roadshow Trust. We either become partners or
they become clients of ours. If we are partners they would act as project managers for us for free.
Once it is up and running they would then take some earnings to cover their time from any profits.
[Iris departed the meeting.]
Check out the website: NZ Roadshow Trust for more information on their activities.
Ian Kennedy, Bill Kain and Max Burnell are all keen to help and a meeting is needed early March to
discuss our options further.
Need to discuss with the who would ultimately own the material produced?
We also need to get some legal advice on our MoU.
It was moved “that in principle Council agrees to advance the Hidden Universe project with the NZ
Roadshow Trust, with appropriate legal advice being sought as required”.
A Hewitt/ J Adams – carried
It was also moved that “If appropriate the NZ Roadshow Trust will become the project manager
including handling of project finances”
A Hewitt/ J Adams - carried
John, Louis and Trish to assist Allan to review the objectives and the fund raising strategy.
Prof Walker - Interview on DVD
Prof Walker was recently interviewed on video camera. Copies of the resultant DVD will be
distributed for comment once they are available. Action: Further discussion about this at next meeting,
with a view to giving due consideration to interviewing other notorieties.
Introductory Guide to Farm Soil Mapping by Andrew Manderson
This is a kit that was put together for farmers to map their own farms.
Favourable comments have been received; any comments on it welcome; a few copies were circulated
to Council members.
Action: Information about it to also be published in Soil News. Alec to ask Andrew to prepare a short
summary.
Education and Science Fairs:
Science Fairs
Letters going out about Easter.
Conferences:
NZSSS/ ASSS Joint Conference, Massey University, 2008
- Abstracts due by 1 st March (short; not published).
- Extended abstracts due 1 st July.
- Early bird registration closes 22 nd September 2008. Full details are in 2 nd circular.
73

- Fee – full conference member – just over $800 for everything including field trips except the
conference dinner. Students $450 early bird.
- Carbon neutral conference – optional contribution of $10 towards planting trees.
- Theme speakers have nearly all been confirmed.
Grateful thanks were extended from Council to Vince and his team for their efforts to date.
After discussion it was agreed that the amount of support that the Society would provide for students
wishing to travel to this year’s conference would initially at least be divided as follows:
Lincoln University – up to $5000
Waikato University – up to $3000
Massey University – up to $1500
- with the provisos that the money be spread over a many paid up student members as possible; that
money can be reallocated where it is not utilised; and that there be a maximum limit of $600 claimed
per student. In addition, if all the allocated money is used, the HoD’s may write to the President
including details of each University’s additional contributions towards attending the conference. At
the President’s discretion, more funds may be made available.
Action: Alec to send a letter outlining these details to HoD’s.
It was moved “that the payments above be approved”
A Mackay/ C deKlein - carried
Billeting will be further explored as an option.
Action: Trish to send Alec a list of Manawatu members to approach for interest.
World Congress, Brisbane 2010
NZ evening get together suggested.
Action: Brent to explore further.
Need to also explore whether we have any option to link up with FLRC in either 2010 or 2011 to give
members a conference outlet other than just 2010 Brisbane.
Soil Science Update/ Roundup
The three major FRST funded soil science programmes (LUCI, SLURI and Soil Services) are up for
funding review next week.
General Business
MfE report
John Adams commented that the soils section in this year’s version of this report is much improved as
compared to the soils data/ commentary included in the 1997 report.
ANZSSPEF
Need to amend the terms of reference.
Action: Brent to arrange.
IUSS
Structure of IUSS is going to change - probably in 2010.
RSNZ
Structure of RSNZ is also going to change soon too.
Secretariat
Correspondence
None of particular note other than changes of contact details.
NEXT MEETING
Around mid May – Secretary to canvas members closer to the time.
Meeting closed at 3.40pm.
74

NZSSS fellowships
The NZSSS Fellowship is the highest award conferred for distinction either in research, technology,
teaching, extension or the advancement of soil science. The awarding sub-committee of Council
(consisting of President, Vice-President, and Past-President) is now seeking nominations for this
award. Up to four awards will be made in 2008. NZSSS members are asked to seriously consider who
would be an appropriate candidate for this prestigious award. If you have someone in mind and think a
case should be prepared, please get in touch with me.
Alec Mackay
(alec.mackay@agresearch.co.nz)
Abstracts
Pesticide sorption and degradation characteristics in New Zealand
soils—a synthesis from seven field trials
Murray E. Close 1 , Robert Lee 2 , Ajit K. Sarmah 2 , Liping Pang 1 , Rod Dann 1 , Guna N. Magesan 2 ,*
Jim P.C. Watt2,†, Keith W. Vincent 2 ,‡
1 Institute of Environmental Science and Research, PO. Box 29181, Christchurch, New Zealand
email: murray.close@esr.cri.nz
2 Landcare Research NZ Ltd, Private Bag 3127, Hamilton, New Zealand
*present address: Scion, 3020, Rotorua, New Zealand.
†address: 41 Chambers St, havelock North, New Zealand.
‡address: Soil Selection Services limited, 8301, North, New Zealand.
The transport and fate of selected pesticides was determined at seven field sites located throughout
New Zealand. Mixtures of pesticides and bromide (br) were applied to plots and soil and water
samples, collected at 1–3 monthly intervals over the study period, were analysed for residual
pesticides and br. The maximum depth of sampling varied from 0.2 to 2.5 m for the suction cup
samplers and 0.8 to 1.0 m for the soil sampling. inverse modelling was used with three models,
glEaMS, lEaChM, and hydRuS, to estimate Koc and half-life values for the applied pesticides. diazinon
and procymidone had much lower Koc values than the selected literature values (SlVs), indicating they
will be much more mobile in New Zealand soils than would be expected from the SlVs. picloram had
similar Koc values to the SlV at the Te awa and Twyford sites but was much less mobile in the
allophanic horotiu soil, as was triclopyr. There was a slight effect of allophane on sorption for
hexazinone, picloram, and triclopyr for the and Kiripaka soils. atrazine, simazine, and terbuthylazine
Koc values tended to be less than the SlV, whereas bromacil Koc values were greater than the SlV and
hexazinone had similar Koc values to the SlV. diazinon, hexazinone, simazine, and terbuthylazine all
had similar half-life values to the SlVs. atrazine was on average c. 4 times less persistent than the SlV,
whereas bromacil was slightly less persistent than the SlV. 2,4-d was about twice as persistent as the
SlV would indicate whereas picloram, triclopyr, and procymidone were much more persistent than the
SlVs, with factors of 4, 5, and 50, respectively, for these pesticides, and were outside the reported
range of literature values. These studies have provided a greater knowledge of field-based Koc and halflife
values in New Zealand soils under a range of climatic conditions, and the measured variability in
the Koc and half-life values can be used to carry out a sensitivity analysis of leaching predictions.
Keywords 2,4-d; atrazine; bromacil; diazinon; hexazinone; picloram; procymidone; simazine;
terbuthylazine; triclopyr; bromide; Koc; half-life; sorption; degradation; inverse modelling
75

Comparison of three Multiobjective Optimization Algorithms for Inverse
Modeling of Vadose Zone Hydraulic Properties
Thomas Wöhling 1 , Jasper A. Vrugt 2 , Gregory F. Barkle 3
1 Corresponding author. Lincoln Environmental Research, Lincoln Ventures Ltd, Ruakura Research Centre,
Hamilton, New Zealand. Email: woehling@lvlham.lincoln.ac.nz
2 Center for Nonlinear Studies (CNLS), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
3 Aqualinc Research Ltd, Post Office Box 14-041, Enderley, Hamilton, New Zealand.
Inverse modeling has become increasingly popular for estimating effective hydraulic properties across
a range of spatial scales. In recent years, many different algorithms have been developed to solve
complex multiobjective optimization problems. In this paper we compare the efficiency of the Nondominated
Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II), the Multiobjective Shuffled Complex Evolution
Metropolis (MOSCEM-UA) algorithm, and AMALGAM, a multi-algorithm genetically adaptive
search method for multiobjective estimation of the soil hydraulic parameters. In our analyses, we
implement the HYDRUS-1D model, and use observed pressure head data at three different depths
from the Spydia experimental field site in New Zealand. Our optimization problem is posed in a
multiobjective context by simultaneously employing three complementary root-mean-square error
criteria at each depth. We analyze the trade-off between these criteria and the adherent Pareto
uncertainty. The results demonstrate that all three algorithms were able to find a good approximation
of the Pareto set of solutions, but differed in rate of convergence to this distribution. Small differences
in performance of the various algorithms were observed because of the relative high dimension of the
optimization problem in combination with the presence of multiple local optimal solutions within the
three-objective search space. The Pareto parameter sets yielded satisfactorily results when simulating
the transient tensiometric pressure at predetermined observation points in the investigated vadose zone
profile. The overall best parameter set was found by AMALGAM with RMSE values of 0.14 / 0.11 /
0.17 m at the 0.4, 1.0 and 2.6 m depths respectively. In contrast, the fit errors where substantially
higher at these respective depths with RMSE values ranging from 0.87 - 1.31 m when using soil
hydraulic parameters derived from laboratory analysis of small vadose zone cores.
Fingerprints and age models for widespread New Zealand tephra marker
beds erupted since 30,000 years ago: a framework for NZ-INTIMATE
David J. Lowe 1 , Phil A.R. Shane 2 , Brent V. Alloway 3 and Rewi M. Newnham 4
1 Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New
Zealand; 2 School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland, Private Bag
92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand; 3 GNS Science, 1 Fairway Drive, Avalon, P.O. Box 30368, Lower Hutt
5040, New Zealand; 4 School of Geography, University of Plymouth, Plymouth PL4 8AA, United Kingdom
The role of tephras in the NZ-INTIMATE project is a critical one because most high-resolution
palaeoclimatic records are linked and dated by one or more tephra layers. In this review, first we
document eruptive, distributional, and compositional fingerprinting data, both mineralogical and
geochemical, for 22 key marker tephras erupted since 30,000 years ago to facilitate their identification
and correlation. We include new glass compositional data. The selected marker tephras comprise 10
from Taupo and nine from Okataina volcanoes (rhyolitic), one from Tuhua volcano (peralkaline
rhyolitic), and one each from Tongariro and Egmont volcanoes (andesitic). Second, we use four
approaches to develop 2σ-age models for the tephras (youngest to oldest): (1) calendar ages for
Kaharoa and Taupo/Y were obtained by wiggle-matching log-derived tree-ring sequences dated by
14 C; (2) Whakaipo/V was dated using an age-depth model from peat; (3) 14 tephras in the montane
Kaipo peat sequence (Waimihia/S, Unit K, Whakatane, Tuhua, Mamaku, Rotoma, Opepe/E,
Poronui/C, Karapiti/B, Okupata, Konini, Waiohau, Rotorua, Rerewhakaaitu) were dated by
simultaneously wiggle-matching stratigraphic position and 51 independent 14 C-age points against
IntCal04 using Bayesian probability methods via both OxCal and Bpeat; and (4) the five oldest
76

tephras, erupted before ca 18,000 cal. yr BP, were dated by calibrating limited numbers of 14 C ages
using IntCal04 (Okareka) or comparison curves of the expanded Cariaco Basin sequence (Te Rere,
Kawakawa/Oruanui, Poihipi, Okaia). Kawakawa/Oruanui tephra, the most widely distributed marker
tephra, was erupted probably ca 27,097 ± 957 cal. yr BP. Potential dating approaches for the older
tephras include their identification in Antarctic ice cores (if present) or annually laminated sediments
for which robust calendar-age models have been constructed, high-precision AMS 14 C dating on
appropriate material from environmentally stable sites, systematic luminescence dating, or new
radiometric techniques (e.g. U-Th/He) if suitable minerals are available and errors markedly reduced.
Further application of Bayesian age-modelling to stratigraphic sequences of 14 C ages, possibly
augmented with luminescence ages, may help refine age models for pre-Holocene tephras with the
largest errors. Finally, we discuss the critical role these marker tephras play in the ongoing
construction of an event stratigraphy for the New Zealand region, which is a key objective of
Australasian and Southern Hemisphere INTIMATE projects.
Source: Quaternary Science Reviews (2008) 27: 95-126.
_______________________
Selected abstracts from the New Zealand Trace elements Group Conference 2008, WEL Energy
Trust Academy of Performing Arts, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand; 13-15
February 2008.
Copper and zinc in soils: Too little or too much?
Brian J. Alloway
Dept of Soil Science, School of Human and Environmental Sciences, University of Reading, UK
Copper and zinc are essential for the normal healthy growth of plants (and animals/humans). When the
available concentration of either element in the soil is too low, plants suffer from deficiency and when
it is too high, toxicity will occur, at least in the more sensitive organisms. Ideally, the available
concentrations should be in the window of essentiality between the two extremes.
Background concentrations of copper and zinc in selected countries and the critical concentrations
used in the interpretation of soil test extractions will be considered. Brief mention will be made of the
essential functions of copper and zinc in plants, the soil and plant factors affecting bioavailability and
examples of the effects of deficiencies of on crop yield and quality. The main sources of copper and
zinc contamination will also be covered, together with typical soil concentrations encountered at
different types of contaminated sites. The upper critical concentrations (PNEC, NOAEL etc) adopted
in different countries to protect soil organisms and processes will be compared and the risks to soil
fertility discussed.
The key themes emerging from these considerations of copper and zinc in soils are:
Low available concentrations can reduce crop yields and quality without the appearance of obvious
symptoms (hidden deficiencies).
Existing upper limit values are helpful for protecting soils from toxic accumulations, but need to be
tailored to local soils, environmental conditions and land management.
Intensive livestock production and fungicidal formulations are the main sources, except where sewage
sludge is applied to land or zinc fertilisers are used on a regular basis.
77

Soil properties affecting the bioavailability of copper and zinc, respectively, can alter over time as a
result of climate change and/or changes in farming practice. These, together with any new crops
and/or cultivars grown, have to be considered in relation to both potential deficiencies and toxicities.
The zinc content of grains is becoming increasingly important because < 50% of the world’s
population have insufficient zinc in their diet.
Metal chemistry and bioavailability in a biosolids-amended forest soil
following conversion of the land for agricultural usage
R G McLaren and L M Clucas
Centre for Soil and Environmental Quality, Agriculture and Life Sciences Division, PO Box 84 Lincoln
University, Lincoln 7647, Canterbury
Application of biosolids to forests as a method of disposal is currently being used by authorities
around the world, including New Zealand.
This practice can lead to a build up of metals (from the biosolids) within the forest litter layer.
However, as long as the land remains under forest, the chance of these metals entering the human food
chain is low. This may cease to be the case if the forest is cleared for conversion of the land back for
agriculture.
This study, using incubation and plant growth techniques, examines the fate of metals in a Pinus
radiata plantation forest treated with metal-spiked biosolids, following simulated conversion of the
land back for agricultural use. Mixing of the biosolids-treated forest litter into the underlying mineral
soil resulted in high concentrations of metals (Cu, Ni and Zn) in easily extractable forms, and there
was also very little change in these concentrations during a subsequent 2-year incubation of the
samples. Soil solution concentrations of the metals were also enhanced substantially by the various
original biosolids treatments.
Chemical speciation of the soil solutions using WHAM 6 showed that whereas solution Cu was
dominated by organic complexes, most Ni and Zn was present at Ni 2+ and Zn 2+ , with generally less
than 5% of these elements present as organic complexes. Addition of lime to the soils substantially
decreased both readily extractable and soil solution metal concentrations, however, even in their
unlimed state there were no adverse effects due to the metals on plant growth as determined in a wheat
germination and seedling growth test. Nevertheless, metal concentrations in the wheat seedlings were
increased by the various original biosolids treatments.
Plant metal concentrations showed strong correlations with either soil solution metal ion activities, or
effective soil solution concentrations as determined by diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT). The
results from this study are discussed in relation to the possible consequences of growing agricultural
crops on land converted from forest soils that have previously received applications of biosolids.
Accumulation, dynamics and risks of fertiliser-derived fluorine in grazed
pasture systems: a review
P Loganathan 1 , MJ Hedley 1 and ND Grace 2
1 Fertilizer and Lime Research Centre, Institute of Natural Resources, Massey University, Private Bag 11222,
Palmerston North, New Zealand. 2 AgResearch Limited, Grasslands Research Centre, Private Bag 11008,
Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Fluorine (F) continues to accumulate in biologically active topsoils under pasture mainly as a result of
phosphorus (P) fertiliser input. Excessive levels of soil F have the potential to cause adverse effects on
78

soil and ground water quality and livestock health. The rate of F accumulation in topsoils depends on
soil texture, type of minerals, and pH. In most pastoral soils with near-neutral pH, the majority of
fertiliser-derived F remains in the topsoil and little moves below a depth of 20-30 cm and therefore is
unlikely to contaminate ground waters. However, F may pose a risk to shallow ground waters in very
acidic low P-fixing soils.
Pasture forage accumulation of F is very low; therefore, F intake by animals through pasture
consumption is much lower than F intake through soil ingestion. Ingestion of high rates of topsoil
having elevated F concentrations can result in chronic fluorosis leading to bone damage or tooth wear
in livestock.
The bone F concentration of sheep generally increases curvilinearly with age, with the rate of bone F
accumulation greatest in lambs. A recent survey of sheep farms with a long fertiliser history showed
that sheep bone F concentrations observed in these farms (less than 601 mg F/kg DM) were much
lower than the threshold bone F concentration of 2,400 mg F/kg DM reported for chronic fluorosis.
This suggests that the potential risk of chronic fluorosis occurring in sheep grazing most New Zealand
pastures is low. Reducing soil ingestion by maintaining good pasture cover, especially during winter
periods, can reduce F accumulation in livestock.
Concentrations and Species of Cu, Zn and Ni in Soil Solution in
Response to Anthropogenic Impacts
Guodong Yuan
Landcare Research, PB 11052, Palmerston North, yuang@LandcareResearch.co.nz
Human impacts on soils would increase as urban boundary expands, agriculture intensifies, and more
chemicals in larger quantity enter the soils. Understanding the dynamics of introduced chemicals,
including their concentrations and species in soil solution, would help the sustainable use of soil
resource. In this regard, long-term data would be particularly valuable because soil is a complex
system and its ability to cope with human impacts varies. Here I collected soil solution by
centrifugation and analysed copper, zinc, and nickel concentrations in response to a range of human
impacts over years when the soils were under normal pasture, amended with metal-spiked biosolid,
limed, and acidified. The chemical species of the metals were obtained from Windermere Humic
Aqueous Model (WHAM).
Before biosolid amendment in 1997 the baseline concentrations of Cu, Ni, and Zn in soil solution were
0.27, 0.11 and 1.2 µM, respectively, and dominated (>66%) by free ion species, the most toxic one.
Adding metal-spiked biosolid to soil (Cu loading 180, Ni 58, or Zn 296 mg/kg) increased Cu, Ni, and
Zn in soil solution to 3.97, 13.2, and 476 µM in 1998. In the next two years, there was little change in
Cu concentration, whereas both Ni and Zn concentrations decreased with time. Liming the soil to raise
pH from 5 to 7 significantly lowered the concentrations of Cu (1.87–2.36 µM), Ni (0.93–2.21 µM),
and Zn (0.84–2.94 µM) in 2001–2003. Free ion species accounted for

Ecotoxicity of aged trace elements (As, Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn) in orchard soils
SK Gaw 1 *, ND Kim 2 , GL Northcott 3 , G Robinson and AL Wilkins 1
1 University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand
2 Environment Waikato, PO Box 4010, Hamilton East, Hamilton, New Zealand
3 HortResearch, Ruakura Research Centre, Private Bag 3123, Hamilton, New Zealand
4 Hill Laboratories, Private Bag 3205, Hamilton, New Zealand
* current address University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
New Zealand orchard soils can contain elevated concentrations of trace elements (As, Cd, Cu, Pb and
Zn) as a result of long-term applications of agrichemicals and fertilisers.
While concentrations of these aged residues can exceed international soil acceptance criteria, there is
currently only limited New Zealand specific data on the toxicity of aged trace elements in soils to
terrestrial organisms.
Ten soils were collected from orchards and background sites from with in the Auckland and Waikato
regions. Bioassays were used to determine the toxicity of aged As, Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn residues to
plants, micro-organisms and earthworms (Aporrectodea caliginosa). The results of the bioassays were
compared with both total and neutral salt (1 M NH 4 NO 3 and 0.01 M CaCl 2 ) extractable trace element
concentrations.
There were significant negative correlations between soil copper concentrations (neutral salt
extractable and/or total) and earthworm cocoon production and radish leaf yield. The ratio of soil
microbial carbon to soil carbon (% C mic /Org-C) was negatively correlated with total (As, Cd, Cu and
Pb) and neutral salt extractable (Cd and Cu) trace element concentrations. The neutral salt extractions
appear to be better indicators of the toxicity of trace elements than total trace element concentration as
additional significant negative correlations were found for the neutral salt extractable metal
concentrations which were not observed for total trace element concentrations.
Our results indicate that the elevated concentrations of trace elements measured in some orchard soils
are likely to be having adverse effects on terrestrial organisms.
Inadvertent sources of trace elements in Waikato’s rural soils
Nick Kim a , Matthew Taylor a , Richard Chapman b , Jon Harris c , Peter Robinson c
a Environment Waikato, Private Bag 4010, Hamilton, New Zealand
b Soil & Land Evaluation Ltd, Hamilton, New Zealand
c Hill Laboratories, Private Bag 3205, Hamilton, New Zealand
Over the last few years, the Waikato Regional Council has expanded its soil monitoring to include
measurements of trace elements in the region’s agricultural and horticultural soils. In this paper we
provide summary statistics for total acid-recoverable (pseudo-total) concentrations of 32 elements and
total concentrations of one element (F) in both background and production soils of the Waikato region.
Statistical comparison of production to background soils, relative surface enrichments, and interelement
correlations enable us to infer likely and potential sources of those elements which show some
form of enrichment, and derive estimates of historic accumulation rates for those elements which have
been gradually accumulating.
Elements that show statistically significant increases in acid recoverable concentrations in productive
soils compared with our background soils fall into five source or mechanism categories. The first
group represents elements linked to use of various types of fertilisers. These include P, Ca, Mg, K
and possibly Na, and also F, Cd, U, Rb and Sr. Historic accumulation rates of Cd, F and U in Waikato
80

soils are estimated to have averaged 2600 µgF/kg/yr, 5-7 µgCd/kg/yr and 19 µgU/kg/yr. Use of
superphosphate fertilisers can account for all additional F and Cd, and two-thirds of the additional
acid-recoverable U. Rb and Sr appear to follow K and Mg, respectively. The second group represents
elements linked to use of animal remedies and veterinary medicines. Widespread use of facial eczema
remedies at annual Zn loadings of 5-7 kg/ha/yr (where used) appears to have caused a significant
increase in average Zn in Waikato soils, with an estimated annual accumulation rate of 700
µgZn/kg/yr. Cu also shows signs of possible enrichment that may be linked to use of Cu supplements
(etc) in livestock. The third group are linked to pesticide use in horticultural areas; these elements
include Cu, Zn, As and Pb.
The fourth group is potentially the most interesting, because it appears to represent an accelerated
attack or weathering of aluminosilicate minerals in productive relative to background soils. Acid
recoverable Al is 3.2 times higher (p

carbon dioxide concentrations were determined. Temperature and root zone carbon dioxide were
positively correlated, and plant diversity statistics reached maximum values at intermediate
temperatures (35 C). Lead and arsenic concentrations varied considerably by species and location,
but general trends were that succulent plants avoided trace metal uptake at higher temperatures
compared to lower temperatures, while plants in the composite and grass families tended to avoid lead
uptake at higher temperatures. Arsenic uptake by composite and grass plants generally increased with
increasing temperature. The legacy of allowing a nuisance mine fire to burn for 45 years may now
also include a variety of accumulated toxins now bioavailable in this abandoned community.
Forensic Applications of Multielement Analysis
Gordon M. Miskelly
Department of Chemistry, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, NZ
Profiling using multielement analysis has played a significant role in criminalistics, in applications
such as discriminating glass or bullet fragments. More recently, such multielement analysis has also
been applied to precious inorganic commodities such as gold and diamonds, and also to food items of
commercial value. Multielement analysis of materials of biological origin can provide discrimination
complementary to DNA, isotopic, or organic component analysis.
However, the application of multielement profiling to environmental or food products presents
significant challenges, including consideration of varying matrices, chain of custody, and validity of
the link between elemental concentrations and any putative source.
It is also important to develop databases of sufficient size that the variability in the elemental
compositions is well represented or can be modeled appropriately. These considerations will be
discussed with respect to the discrimination of the region of origin of New Zealand Pinot Noir wines,
and distinguishing cannabis plants grown on different soils.
Evaluating the use of DGT-DIFS to measure Cd, Cu, Ni and Zn plant
availability in soils treated with biosolids and metal salts
Amanda Black 1 , Ron McLaren 1 , Suzie Reichman 1 , Tom Speir 2
1 Soil and Physical Sciences, Agriculture and Life Science Division, Lincoln University, PO Box 84, Lincoln
2 Environmental Science and Research (ESR) Keneperu Drive, Porirua
The application of biosolids to land is increasing because of the benefits of improved soil fertility and
productivity, as well as providing an alternative use of waste disposal. However, the metals present in
biosolids are potential concerns for environmental and public health, arising from the possibility of
metal accumulation in soils and their introduction into the food chain via plant uptake. The success of
environmental risk assessments of metal contaminated soils depends on their accuracy of estimating
metal bioavailability. Diffusive gradients in thin-films (DGT) combined with 2D-DIFS (DGTinduced
fluxes in soils) is a relatively new technique for measuring labile metals in soils,
characteristically expressed as effective solution metal concentrations (C E ).
This technique has shown to be a promising surrogate for predicting metal uptake in plants and is
being extensively examined using three soil types collected from the Canterbury region. Lysimeters
(containing soil monoliths) were treated with a one-off application of increasing levels of Cd (1, 5, 10
mg/kg), Cu (50, 200, 750 mg/kg), Ni (30, 150, 300 mg/kg) and Zn (70, 300, 1000 mg/kg) in the
presence and absence of biosolids (400 kg nitrogen ha -1 yr -1 ). Ryegrass (Lolium perenne) was sown on
each lysimeter immediately after treatment application. Ryegrass, harvested at 6-monthly intervals is
82

analysed for total plant metal content and soil (0-10 cm) is sampled and assessed using the DGT and
2D-DIFS method. Metal contents of plants generally increased as treatment levels increased.
Zinc and Ni contents of plants were higher in soils treated with metal salts in the presence of biosolids.
Cadmium levels were higher in treatments without biosolids, and highest in the Cd-only treatment.
With respect to plant uptake, Cu and Ni levels reached a plateau, whilst corresponding C E values
increased linearly. However, reasonable linear relationships were found between the C E of Zn and Cd
and corresponding plant contents.
National methodology for deriving soil contaminant levels protective of
human health
Anja Feise-Preston
Advisor - Contaminated Sites, Ministry for the Environment - Manatū Mō Te Taiao
Environment House, 23 Kate Sheppard Place, Thorndon, PO Box 10362, Wellington
After extensive public consultation the Ministry for the Environment has confirmed that it will
develop a national risk-based methodology for deriving soil contaminant levels protective of human
health.
A technical advisory group will assist the Ministry in the process by assessing toxicological
information and determining exposure pathways appropriate in the New Zealand context.
A suite of numerical criteria for priority contaminants as examples of the national methodology will
also be calculated. This methodological framework will be open for public feedback and will form the
base of a discussion document on a proposed National Environmental Standard.
Experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of iron oxides to minimize the
uptake of arsenic by vegetables from a contaminated soil
B.J. Alloway a , G.P. Warren a , N.W. Lepp b , B. Singh c , F.J.M. Bochereau d , C. Penny b
a
Department of Soil Science, University of Reading, UK, b School of Biological and Earth Sciences, Liverpool
John Moore’s University, Liverpool UK, c School of Land Water and Crop Sciences, The University of Sydney,
Sydney, NSW, Australia, d Forest Research, Alice Holt Research Station, Farnham, UK.
A series of laboratory, greenhouse and field experiments was conducted to investigate the efficacy of
selected adsorptive minerals in minimizing the uptake by vegetables of arsenic and cadmium from
contaminated soils. This paper reports a two year field experiment at an arsenic-contaminated site in
Cornwall where the effectiveness of two forms of iron oxide: ferrous sulphate (FeSO 4 , oxidised insitu)
and ‘iron grit’ were compared. A sequence of crops (potato, cauliflower, Savoy cabbage, spinach,
beetroot, calabrese, radish and lettuce) was grown and analysed for arsenic. The treatments were
incorporated into the top 10cm of soil (by rotovator) to give FeSO 4 concentrations of 0% (Control),
0.2%, 0.5% and 1%, with simultaneous applications of lime, and iron grit at 0.2% (with no lime).
The Cornwall site was adjacent to a former arsenic smelter and had a total arsenic content 748 mg kg -1
in the topsoil. It was found that 0.5% FeSO 4 was the most effective treatment, reducing arsenic
contents by up to 49% in some cases. Application of lime with the FeSO 4 (at a FeSO 4 : lime ratio of
1:2.5) was necessary to prevent severe acidification and manganese toxicity. Results for some of the
crops in one year are shown in Fig.1.
83

Figure 1. Arsenic concentrations in crops at the Cornwall site with different iron oxide treatments
Iron grit was found to be less effective in reducing arsenic uptake than FeSO 4 . The scale of the
reduction in arsenic uptake by certain vegetables using this method may enable some arseniccontaminated
sites to be used for growing vegetables. However, the method requires further
evaluation, including testing on different soil types at sites with other sources of arsenic
contamination, and growing a range of cultivars of each species.
Copper and zinc fractionation and speciation in sewage sludge amended
with metals
P. Jeyakumar 1 , P. Loganathan 1 , S. Sivakumaran 2 C. W. N. Anderson 1 and R.G. McLaren 3
1 Soil and Earth Sciences, Institute of Natural Resources, Massey Uinversity, Palmerston North; 2 Sustainable
Land Use/Quality, HortResearch, Palmerston North; 3 Soil and Physical Sciences Group, Agriculture and Life
Sciences Division, Lincoln University, Lincoln.
Sewage sludge (biosolids) is an end product of modern wastewater treatment systems. Biosolids, rich
in organic matter and certain plant nutrients, can be a beneficial amendment to agricultural soil.
However, there are concerns that biosolids also carry contaminants such as heavy metals and
pathogenic organisms, and so agricultural use of biosolids is often regulated. The bioavailability and
migration of heavy metals to water bodies when biosolids are applied to land depend on the chemical
nature of the metals in the solid and liquid phases of the biosolids. Copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) are two
heavy metals commonly found to be in the highest concentrations in biosolids. Biosolids (12–21%
solids) were collected from the Palmerston North City Council Waste Water Treatment Plant,
amended separately with three levels (mg/L) of Cu (586, 1355 and 2206) and Zn (1179, 3837 and
5832) in sulphate form, and anaerobically incubated. Fractionation and speciation of Cu and Zn were
conducted on subsamples from the incubated biosolids 0, 25 and 55 days after amendment.
The highest percentage of Cu in the biosolids solid phase was found in the organic and residual
fractions (33–84%), and this percentage increased with incubation time. In contrast, the percentage of
Cu in these fractions decreased with the increased rate of Cu addition, which also resulted in increased
percentages of Cu present in the oxide-bound and specifically adsorbed fractions. The Cu in the
exchangeable fraction (bioavailable fraction) was 4–12% and this fraction decreased with time. Most
of the Zn in the solid phase was associated with the specifically adsorbed and the exchangeable
fractions, and also with the oxide-bound fraction. The Zn associated with the organic matter and
residual fractions was less than 8%.
The percentage of metals in the biosolids solution phase increased with the increased rate of metal
additions but decreased with incubation time. In the solution phase the percentage of Zn (0.11–37%)
was higher than that of Cu (0.01–13%). Nearly all Cu in the solution phase after 25 days incubation
84

was complexed with organic matter (81–100%), whereas Zn was present mainly as Zn 2+ (38–49 %)
and ZnSO 4 (28–49%) species.
The dehydrogenase activity in biosolids was reduced by 50% (EC 50 ) at the total solution phase Cu
concentration of 0.08 mg/L and solid phase exchangeable Cu concentration of 110 mg/kg; the
corresponding EC 50 values for Zn were 20 mg/L and 380 mg/kg respectively.
Cadmium and phthalic acid sorption by hydrous ferric oxide:
experimental study and surface complexation modeling
Yantao Song 1 , Naresh Singhal 1 , Peter J. Swedlund 2 , Simon Swift 3
1 Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Auckland (UOA), New Zealand
2 Department of Chemistry, UOA, New Zealand
3 Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology, UOA, New Zealand
Cadmium enrichment related to phosphoric fertilizer use is of concern in pastoral soils, because Cd 2+
accumulates in the food chain. Concentrations of Cd 2+ in grains and grazing animals have been
occasionally found to exceed the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) set by New Zealand
Food Authorities.
Metal sorption/desorption processes can significantly affect metal toxicity and bioavailability in
natural environments. Ferrihydrite, although present in small amounts, has been considered to be a
dominant sorbent of dissolved metals in aquatic systems due to its broad distribution, large surface
area and reactive surface properties. Natural organic matter, particularly humic substances, has also
been found to influence metal ion sorption on to oxide.
To understand the fate and transport of trace metals in the environment, it is necessary to address the
interactions between metal ions, organic matter, and mineral oxides. However, due to the complex
nature of humic substances, experimental sorption data are difficult to interpret and are not amenable
to surface complexation modeling. As carboxylic and phenolic groups were supposed to dominate
humic substances sorption behaviour, this study used simpler molecular structure organic ligands
containing these functional groups as surrogates for natural organic matter.
In this study, Cd 2+ sorption onto ferrihydrite in the presence of phthalic acid over pH 4.0-8.5 was
investigated. Surface complexation modeling was performed to describe Cd 2+ sorption, speciation and
partitioning in aqueous systems. In binary systems, Cd 2+ and phthalic acid sorption by ferrihydrite was
well reproduced using the diffuse layer model with sorption constants derived from the experimental
data using FITEQL4.0, and the sorption process was modeled with Visual MINTEQ. Using the
optimised binary sorption constants, Cd 2+ sorption onto ferrihydrite in the presence of phthalic acid
was well predicted with the inclusion of two ternary complexes.
When are urban lakes contaminated land?
Andrew Rumsby a and Nick Kim b
a Pattle Delamore Partners Limited, Auckland; b Environment Waikato, PO Box 4010, Hamilton
Lake Rotoroa, or Hamilton Lake, is about 54 ha in area and was formed approximately 19,000-20,000
years BP.
History moved forward a few notches. In the 1950s, local colonists who had moved in around the lake
found themselves repulsed by unsightly growths of the aquatic weed lagarosiphon major.
85

Advanced chemistry sprang to the rescue. In 1959 (precisely 49 years BP), about 11,000 L of the
herbicide sodium arsenite was sprayed over the lake. This proved good at controlling the weeds, and
yielded a significant increase in the Lake’s picturesqueness coefficient. However it also left 5.5
tonnes of arsenic in the lake’s sediments.
The unfortunate anthropogenic arsenic enrichment of Hamilton Lake provided some fodder for
scientific research to about 1990, which by that time had generally established that most of the arsenic
deposited in 1959 could still be accounted for in sediments, weeds, and other parts of the lake
ecosystem.
In 2005, a Resource Management Amendment Act provided the first statutory definition of
“contaminated land” where the word “land” is held to include land covered by water, i.e. beds of
lakes, rivers and coastal marine areas. The same Act formally gave regional councils the function of
identifying “contaminated land.” In 2007, the Waikato Regional council (Environment Waikato)
commissioned extensive sampling of Hamilton Lake, to determine the distribution and fate of arsenic
about 50 years after the original contamination event. Other aims were to identify any other
significant contaminants, quantify risks to recreational users (if any), and allow a decision to be made
about whether this lake’s sediments would meet the new regulatory definition of “contaminated land.”
In this survey, which is the most comprehensive to date, a grid-sampling approach has allowed us to
derive detailed contour diagrams for concentrations of arsenic and other trace elements across the
lake’s bed. This talk will provide details of the new survey work and risk assessment, and answer the
question posed above.
__________________________
Conferences
Update – March 2008
SOILS 2008
SOILS – the living skin of planet Earth
In association with the New Zealand Society of Soil Science, the Australian Society of Soil Science
Inc., and the International Year of Planet Earth, SOILS 2008 will be held at Massey University,
Palmerston North, New Zealand from 1-5 December this year.
Over 200 abstracts have been received for the Soils 2008 Conference, by the time of the Abstract
submission deadline of 1 March 2008. Of these about 55% are from Australia, 35% from New
Zealand and 10% from other countries. We have received abstracts from Brazil, Denmark, Italy,
Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, India and the United States with co-authors also coming from
Germany and Scotland. This will be a truly international gathering!
There has been good support for all of the major themes and Commission meetings highlighted in the
Second Circular (available from www.soilsconference.co.nz). In addition a number of papers which
did not fit into the major themes will be grouped into 2 or 3 additional minor themes.
We hope to be in contact with all Abstract submitters in early April advising of the status of their
Abstracts, after an Organising Committee meeting on 28 March with the President of ASSSI.
Early Bird Registration opens on 1 May 2008 and closes on 22 September 2008.
Authors of accepted papers are expected to submit Extended Abstracts by 1 July 2008.
Vince Neall - Chair, Soils 2008 Organising Committee
Alec Mackay - President, NZ Society of Soil Science
86

Symposium 2008
Nutrient Sensitive Zones-
Nitrogen and Phosphorus, Lakes and Waterways
AUGUST 12 th -13 th
HERITAGE HOTEL, ROTORUA
New Zealand’s lakes and waterways are under threat from intensive farming and
land use. What National Fresh Water Policy changes are necessary to protect
them? How can we work together to ensure the ongoing health of our lakes and
waterways? This two day symposium draws together European, Australian and New
Zealand scientists, farmers, environmentalists, politicians and lake users for
presentations and discussions on one of the major environmental challenges facing
New Zealand. The Hon. Trevor Mallard, Minister for the Environment will open this
important event.
For more information look at our website www.lakeswaterquality.co.nz
Or contact:
Symposium Secretary
symposium@lakeswaterquality.co.nz
or PO Box 2008 Rotorua
87