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).
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RESEARCH FELLOW
As was a lecturer at Waikato University for 12 years I have contributed 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!
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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.
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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.
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