Soil Protection Group

Soils underpin the global economy. Our science focusses on the sustainable production of healthy food in both rural and urban environments. Our transdisciplinary research on soil and the ‘circular bio-economy’ includes the creation of value from biological wastes, the rehabilitation of degraded environments, reducing the entry of contaminants such as cadmium into food products, and ensuring that the nutrients contained in biological wastes provide economic and ecological benefits instead of exacerbating the degradation of waterways. Circular economies in agricultural systems are generated by improving efficiencies of nutrient and pesticide application as well as capturing contaminants that exit the system using, for example, soil conditioners or NZ native ecosystems that are established in agricultural landscapes.

The Soil Protection Group develops new environmental tools and technologies through transdisciplinary collaboration of partners from New Zealand Universities, Crown Research Institutes, and environmental consultancies. Kiwiscience has active collaboration with international partners. We work on both local and global environmental issues.

Try the plant selector tool Tikatipu and model of contaminant fluxes in the soil-plant system Rhizoflux

Contact

Brett Robinson
School of Earth and Environment
University of Canterbury
20 Kirkwood Ave, Ilam
Christchurch 8041
New Zealand

Email: brett [dot] robinson [at] canterbury [dot] ac [dot] nz