Download - New Zealand Society of Soil Science

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
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