The Soil Systems Group sits within Cranfield's broader Soils research area and is concerned with understanding physical, chemical and biological processes in soils and interactions between soils, plants and the environment. We do this at scales from the soil micro-pore to the pedon, field, landscape and beyond, and across all ecosystem types – agricultural, urban and natural.
We use whole-system approaches, and we aim to understand systems well enough to develop predictive mathematical models of them.
Our people
- Guy Kirk - Professor of Soil Systems
- Jim Harris - Professor of Environmental Technology
- Wilfred Otten - Professor of Soil Biophysics
- Nick Girkin - Lecturer in Plant Soil Systems
- Mark Pawlett - Senior Research Fellow in Soil Biology
- Daniel Evans - 75th Anniversary Research Fellow
- Xavier Portell-Canal - Research Fellow in Modelling Soil Processes
- Csilla Hudek - Research Fellow in Modelling Root Traits
- Hanna Manwaring - Research Fellow in Plant and Soil Sciences
- Jo Snoalv - Research Fellow in Modelling African Rice Soils
Our facilities
Facilities available to our group include:
- Centres for Agricultural Innovation
- Wolfson Field Laboratory
- Land Information System (LandIS)
- World Soil Survey and Archive Catalogue (WOSSAC)
Example projects
- Soil carbon
- Root-soil interactions
- Using roots to bio-engineer soil
- Urban BESS (Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Sustainability)
- Modelling national-scale changes in soils
Funding
Our group has obtained funding from the BBSRC, NERC, EPRSC, Defra, EU, BMGF, USACE, AHDB, NGOs.
