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

Grasslands
The Land and Environmental management section has two French students here for 6 months on
internships. Vincent d’Hauteville is working with Andrew Carran and the Global Change team in
the Land and Environment Management Department. I am working on CO2 soil emissions, in
association with the FACE program. (Free Air Carbon dioxide Enrichment). This internship is part of
his life science engineering formation at the INAP-G (Institut National Agronomique de Paris-
Grignon, www.inapg.fr). This institute is now called AgroParisTech, which is the life science branch
of ParisTech Institute, gathering the main engineering schools in Paris.
Vincent Cristia, from the Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Environmental Sciences
(AgroParisTech), France is working with Keith Betteridge on spatial optimization. This work as a
part of the lake Taupo project, aims to help farmers to increase their incomes without overtaking the N
cap given by EW. He is working with software such as Overseer, Farmax or Solver Excel and working
on a study case in Taupo catchments.
Estelle Dominati, also from France, has started in March a PhD on "Valuing the soil ecosystem
services and natural capital". This PhD is being supported by AgResearch as part of the theme 4 of the
SLURI project and is jointly led with the New Zealand Centre for Ecological Economics in Massey
University. Estelle’s chief supervisors are Professor Murray Patterson of NZCEE and Dr Alec
Mackay of AgResearch.
The aim of the PhD is to identify environmental services provided by soils and identify which
processes of soils development are involved in these services. The second step will be to put a value
on some of these services provided by soils through 2 case studies on farms.
Nicole Woutersen has recently started her PhD at Massey University in soil ecology. The aim of her
project is to develop an invertebrate-based index to assess the quality of pastoral soils in New Zealand.
The index will use the feeding, life-cycle, and morphological characteristics of the invertebrates.
These characteristics may prove to be less spatially and temporally variable than measures of
invertebrate density, diversity and activity. The implications of changes in the index with increasing
agriculture intensification will be related to soil functioning.
Waikato University
Since our last report, Richard Smith, our physical volcanologist, has resigned from the Department of
Earth and Ocean Sciences and taken up a position with the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency
Management in Wellington. He and wife Barbara Hobden (volcanic petrologist) left Hamilton in
early January this year and soon after arrival in Wellington were able to announce the safe arrival of a
second son. We wish Richard, Barbara and family all the very best. A replacement lecturership in
volcanology has been advertised at Waikato University.
The Department (with support from Biological Sciences) ran a very successful ‘Earth, Oceans, and
Environment Trail’ on Sunday 4 March to mark ‘Sea Week’ and to promote and enhance universitypublic
relations. Around a dozen staff scattered between Hamilton and Raglan put on mini field
displays and activities for members of the public at six localities. Blessed with good weather and a
high level of enthusiasm, the event went off very well with hundreds of people taking advantage of the
free information-fest on offer. The trail included tours of Hamilton Gardens examining its ‘hidden
landscapes’ (David Lowe), fossil hunting in Te Kuiti group sedimentary rocks (Cam Nelson, Steve
Hood), Mt Karioi volcano lavas and tephras at Te Toto gorge (Roger Briggs), Bridal Veil Falls lavas,
forest vegetation, and a popular demonstration of electrofishing (Dave Campbell, Brendon Hicks,
Bruce Clarkson), Raglan Harbour dynamics (Terry Healy, Dirk Immenga), and beach processes,
surfing waves, and climatic change (Karin Bryan, Willem de Lange).
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