Below you will find a list of downloadable pdfs/videos/links that describe some of our work. Just click on the titles below to download the article or go to the webpage with videos. See also links page.
RadioNZ nights interviews
Louis Schipper has been on a regular spot on RadioNZ speaking with Bryan Crump on a range of soils topics:
- What happens when soil warms?
- Soil phosphorus
- Soil and plant roots
- Soil structure: sand silt and clay and other bits
- How soils treat waste
- Soil quality and health
- Wetland soils
- Greenhouse gas emissions from soil nitrous oxide
- Soil organic matter or carbon
- Soil nitrogen cycling
Videos
Drone footage overview of Kopuatai peat dome and eddy covariance tower https://vimeo.com/560708202 .
A recent introductory video on Soil health filled in collaboration with Ballance fertilisers
TV show on our work on measuring nitrous oxide emission and carbon balances over grazed pastures Rural delivery series 15, episode 8 June 6 2020
A great NZ site for soil educational material
A new educational website with great resources for teachers including hands-on activities, video clips and explanations is here.
Included is an interactive nitrogen cycle with explanations of different aspects of the nitrogen transformations.
Soil carbon in New Zealand.
There has been much talk about increasing carbon in soil to decrease carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Louis gave a talk on managing soil carbon in grazed pastures here.
In conjunction with NZAGRC, we have produced a fact-sheet on soil carbon including descriptions of how carbon is cycled in soil and approaches that are being tested for increasing carbon stocks.
Earlier we produced an article on soil carbon for DairyNZ’s Technical series 2012 updating work on soil carbon here. We describe what soil carbon is, how much carbon is in soil, its role, and what controls increasing and decreasing carbon contents.
Nitrogen cycling in soil
Agricultural productivity has been greatly increased by the use of N fertilisers, however, the accompanying risk of damaging the environment cannot be ignored. Here we overview cycling of nitrogen in soil.
Louis gives a radio interview on RadioNZ programme Nights with Bryan Crump about nitrogen cycling here.
The water cycle
As part of teaching resources developed by the Science Learninig Hub, Dave and Louis explain aspects of the water cycle along here. This is a great website for educational materials for schools but the background is suitable for anyone with interests in science. Dave explains evaporation and transpiration here.
Weather and climate
See Dave Campbell expain about 4 different time and space scales that are commonly used by meteorologists to describe weather phenomena – global scale, synoptic scale, mesoscale and microscale.
Wetland restoration
Follow the above link to a guidebook on restoration of New Zeland wetlands. Dave Campbell wrote the chapter on wetland hydrology. See here for a description of restiad peat bogs.
Kopouatai restiad bog
A Blog post that describes Kopouatai restiad peat bog, one of our main research sites.
Soil carbon in pastures
Dairy Exporter article about the ways in which we are trying to increase of soil carbon in dairy pastures.
General soils information
Our colleague, Professor David Lowe has pulled together information addressing a number of important questions about soils and land use, including: Why are soils important? | What is a soil? | How deep is soil? | What is the best soil? | New Zealand’s soils | Different NZ soils | How old are soils?
Some recent public articles
Schipper,L.A. (2012) Storing carbon in soil: can we slow a revolving door? DairyNZ Technical Series. October 2012, 12: 7-10.
Schipper, L.A. (2011) Nitrogen a slippery element. Countrywide Magazine. September issue.
Schipper, L.A. (2010) Can we take the long view? Editorial in Soil News 58 (5) 151-152.
Schipper, L.A.; Sparling, G.P. (2010) Nitrogen, soils and environment. NZ Science Teacher Journal. Number 125: 16-21.
Lambie S., Schipper, L.A.; Baisden, W.T.; Balks M. (2009) Can dairy cow urine decrease soil carbon? Soil Horizons issue 18.
Sparling G.P. and Schipper L.A. (2009) Long-term changes in carbon and nitrogen in New Zealand pasture soils: a reanalysis of archive data from 1964. Soil Horizons issue 18 p 10.
Sparling, GP; Schipper, LA (2009) Carbon in soils. NZ Science Teacher Journal. Number 120 : 13-15.
Schipper, A.G.; Schipper, L.A. (2009) Going Underground- Visual Soil Assessment. NZ Science
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