David Clarke

Background

BSc Geography at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. MSc

Climate Change and International Development (University of East Anglia), MRes

Assessing the Impacts of Drought on UK Wheat Production (Cranfield University).

Soils and Farming Systems Research Technician at NIAB TAG

(2017-present) providing technical support to a wide range of long-term

agricultural field trials. Investigating how crop productivity (yield) and soil

properties can be influenced by management techniques such as cultivation,

rotation, fertiliser dose and or timings, organic amendments use, pesticide

programs and variety selection.

I am currently undertakeing a CENTA PhD at Cranfield working with NIAB and BGS

Current activities

CENTA PhD at Cranfield with NIAB and BGS developing a structured approach to disentangle the drivers of crop productivity across the crop rotation with a particular focus on spatial/temporal interactions at farm-scale. The high data density available for Morley Farms, Morley St Botolph, and Norfolk will be used to disentangle the spatial/temporal interactions driving crop productivity across the crop rotation. Approaches will be developed to collate and integrate data from different years and of different types (e.g. weather, satellite imagery, in-field observations) to assess spatio-temporal yield stability within and across the rotation and interactions with weather patterns. Long-term NIAB agronomic field trials and monitoring at Morley will be used to evaluate biophysical crop/soil simulation models and then application of integrated modelling approaches with site-specific calibration to support in-season and between-season rotational management decisions.