Volume 55 No 2 April 2007 - New Zealand Society of Soil Science

The contribution of the Universities
Canterbury Agricultural College (later renamed Lincoln College and subsequently reconstituted as
Lincoln University) was the first university institution to teach soil science. Prior to the appointment of
Dr Burns as senior lecturer in 1937 the emphasis had been on soil chemistry and the analysis and
application of fertilizers. Wild had begun a soil survey of part of the Wairau Plains when a teacher at
Marlborough High School between 1911 and 1913. Whilst at Lincoln between 1915 and 1925, he
published Soils and Manures in New Zealand. The 1955 edition of this book included an updated
section on soils of New Zealand based on information provided by Taylor and Pohlen. Dr Burns had
gained a comprehensive knowledge of soils, soil fertility and aspects of soil conservation from his
postgraduate studies at Aberdeen and Cornell Universities. His focus was in teaching basic soil
husbandry skills to diplomate and graduate students in agriculture, establishing short courses for
returned service-men, and in 1946 initiating the first lecture course in soil conservation and soil
erosion at the college, to compliment McCaskill’s lectures on the history and practice of soil
conservation. Dr Burns resigned in 1949. McCaskill continued to offer courses in soil conservation,
until he became Director of the Tussock Grasslands and Mountainlands Institute in the early 1960s.
Brian Douglas, formerly a forester and soil conservator, was appointed in 1962 to lecture in soil
conservation. He was initially based in the Soil Science Department but subsequently transferred to
the Agricultural Engineering Department. By this time soil conservation was taught as part of a subject
entitled watershed management. Over the following decades Dr Tim Davies added courses in land and
water science and management. Dr Davies moved to the University of Canterbury in 2003 and by
2005 the emphasis had changed from soil conservation to sustainable rural land-use.
Pedology and soil survey were not emphasized in teaching until Dr Thomas W. Walker was appointed
foundation Professor of Soil Science in 1952. Pedology had been enlivened in the post war years
following the publication of Hans Jenny’s Factors of Soil Formation. Professor Walker, Arthur F.R.
Adams and Hector D. Orchiston, established a series of fertilizer trials on Canterbury soil sequences
identified by Raeside and Cutler. They applied Jenny’s concepts to the study of nutritional factors
influencing biological nitrogen fixation. In particular the influence of sulphur, phosphorus, and
molybdenum deficiencies in clover and grass pastures. These studies set a foundation for future
studies of soil nutrient limitations in soil sequences and their amendment by the use of fertilizers. In
1958 Walker resigned to become Professor of Agriculture at the University of Newcastle on Tyne
where he was influenced by a noted English pedologist Edward Crompton. Professor Walker was
reappointment to Canterbury Agricultural College in 1960. In the following two decades there were
further soil sequence studies, based on chronosequences, climosequences and lithosequences in both
South and North Islands, the first and most notable being the study of the Franz Josef chronosequence.
In the 1960s Bernard L. Elphick, previously a research officer studying the chemistry of lime and its
reaction in soils, began teaching pedology, but he had little or no field experience to call upon and
enliven the subject. Pedology and instruction in soil survey took a leap forward when Cutler brought
his twenty three years of soil survey experience to the Soil Science Department in 1967, followed by
Philip J. Tonkin in 1969 also recruited from DSIR Soil Bureau and Andrew W. Young in 1974, a
Lincoln graduate. By the 1970s the teaching programme was expanded with the advanced course in
pedology and soil survey supported by courses in earth science and geomorphology. In latter years the
emphasis changed to suit the development of additional degree programmes in resource studies and
landscape architecture, complementing existing degrees in agriculture and horticulture. Soil science
including a component of soil survey was taught principally to forestry students at Canterbury
University by Lincoln University staff. Throughout the 1960s to 1980s a number of postgraduates
were employed as soil conservators and pedologists with some completing Ph.D. degrees in New
Zealand and overseas universities. Cutler retired in 1984 to be replaced by Dr Robert Kemp who in
turn resigned in 1990 and was replaced by Peter C. Almond, a Massey graduate with soil survey
experience with DSIR Soil Bureau and the New Zealand Forest Service. Dr Tonkin retired in 2002 and
was replaced by Dr Carol Smith, a graduate of Reading and Aberdeen Universities (UK) in 2004. Drs
Tonkin, Kemp, Almond and Smith all had postgraduate training in pedology and soil survey.
Massey Agricultural College (later reconstituted as Massey University) appointed Abram W. Hudson
the first Professor of Soils and Field Husbandry in 1951, after first arriving as a lecturer in soils and
fertilisers in 1935. Professor Hudson conducted numerous long-term fertiliser and lime field trials
around the North Island, and was responsible for the establishment of the Drainage Extension Service.
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