Raj Setia

Understanding organic matter dynamics in salt affected soils by linking remote sensing, organic matter chemistry, modelling and geo-informatics

Both salinity and sodicity are major constraints for successful crop production which could have a huge impact on Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) turnover, which plays a key role in green house gas emission. SOC models may help to predict and understand future changes due to changing climate, altered land use and different land management practices but calibration of these models and their integration with remote sensing and GIS data have not been carried out for salt-affected soils which cover large areas in Australia.

Understanding SOC turnover at various scales requires the integrated use of frontier technologies such as remote sensing, modeling, geoinformatics and sophisticated analytical methods. Clearly, this is important for Australian agriculture because soil organic matter is a major source and sink of nutrients and carbon and we need to understand its dynamics in salt-affected soils. Moreover, the improved understanding of turnover of SOC as well as better prediction of carbon sequestration potential in salt-affected soils gained from this project will be very useful in carbon accounting for Australia and to estimate their contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Raj’s research falls into the CRC’s Program 2 research area.

Objectives:

• Study the effect of salinity/sodicity on Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) pools and their dynamics
• Define whether or not the decomposition constants in the Rothamsted carbon model (RothC model) need to be altered in order to accurately model soil organic carbon pools in salt-affected soils
• Integrate RothC model with Geographical Information System (GlS).

For more information, email Raj.