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

Lincoln Environmental Research
To improve our understanding of the
vadose zone composition and the
groundwater system around our ‘Spydia’,
Aaron Wall, Juliet Clague, and Roland
Stenger have done some more
exploratory coring in recent months (Fig.
1). The additional wells will help Fuli
Wang in our Lincoln office to establish a
model of the groundwater system in the
area surrounding the ‘Spydia’, while
Thomas Wöhling is focussing on the
modelling of the water dynamics from
the soil surface down to the water table.
Aaron Wall exploring the vadose zone in the Tutaeuaua catchment near Lake Taupo.
Last month we learned with great sadness of the untimely death of our former colleague Craig
Burgess. During his time with us from 1998 to 2003 his contribution was vital for the success of our
dairy effluent project at Reporoa and our involvement in the domestic effluent irrigation project at
Temple View. He also contributed substantially to our work in the Pukemanga and Toenepi
catchments. Craig will always be remembered as a great guy, committed to his work, loving the
outdoors, and full of energy.
HortResearch
Rogerio Cichota is leaving us after three and a half years. He will be submitting his PhD thesis on
“Modelling sulphute dynamics in soils - The relevance of Ion pair adsorption” shortly (hopefully) and
has already started work with AgResearch. It's been great having Rogerio around and we are already
missing him. Luckily he will just be over the road, and through SLURI and other projects we'll still be
working together.
Steve Green has attended the LTC conference in Rotorua. As usual he enjoyed it so much that he
received the “red card” for going over time.
Trillaud Mickoël from ENITA in France is here for a internship to the end of August. He will be
working on Steve’s SPASMO modelling program, and trying to put it into another programming
language.
Markus Deurer (with Brent Clothier and Grant Northcott as co-investigators) has come into the
second Marsden round with his proposal on “Can soil biophysics unravel why nitrous oxide emissions
from soils are so variable?” Good luck!
Iris Vogeler has received a Trimble Agriculture Research Fellowship to look at the effect of
wastewater application on soil quality. Iris will go to Germany to work with Prof. Horn from the
University of Kiel and with Prof. Bachmann from the University of Hannover.
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