I am an environmental soil scientist, passionate about conserving and effectively managing New Zealand’s soil resources, my second home is Antarctica, I am a teacher, and a scuba-diver who loves the outdoors.
As a qualified pedologist my goal is to inform best practises to manage land and soil resources for future generations. I work in the broad areas of soil quality, landscape resilience and land use capability assessment, geographical information system mapping and consultancy services.
I am an environmental soil scientist whose main research focus is understanding the impacts of human activities on terrestrial environments. I have conducted research in Alaska, the Tibetan Plateau, Vanuatu, PNG, and the Chatham Islands. I’ve been privileged to have had 11 trips to Antarctica: including two for my PhD on human impacts on the soil environment, one to the Antarctic Peninsula as a field assistant with the Spanish Antarctic Programme, trips downloading a network of soil climate stations, and my first trip, to run a marathon on the continent.
I am involved in a multidisciplinary project characterising the environment around Scott Base, Antarctica, as a baseline against which any environmental effects of base redevelopment can be measured.
Most recently I have been awarded a Marsden fast start to investigate whether penguin mounds serve as natural archives of anthropogenic contamination in remote Antarctic environments. We have conducted first campaign to Cape Bird (summer 22/23) and will go to Cape Hallett next year (summer 23/24).
RESEARCH FELLOW
As was a lecturer at Waikato University for 12 years contributed I to a number of Soil and Environmental Science courses, undergraduate to masters level. During this time I supervised many graduate and undergraduate research projects. I now work as a soil consultant but continue a 0.2FTE (one-day per week) position as senior research fellow at Waikato University, solely working on penguins and contaminants research.
Check out our School of Science website here!
SOIL AND LAND CONSULTANCY WORK
I am based in Hamilton, New Zealand and work alongside pedologist Dr Reece Hill of LandSystems Ltd. We offer soil and land consultancy services, including soil quality and land-use capability assessments, soil and geographical information system mapping. On a usual day we undertake property scale soil and land-use capability assessments to identify high class or highly productive soils for farm land management and subdivision applications.
KEEPING WORK-LIFE BALANCE
When not working, I love to travel, and spend a lot of time enjoying the outdoors with my husband, cycling, hiking, scuba-diving, and fishing.
