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Soil Horizons articles

  1. Reducing nitrogen losses from farms

    This September 2021 sees the conclusion of the 5-year MBIE Endeavour Fund research programme ‘Reducing nitrogen losses from farms’. The focus of this work has been the need for practical management strategies to reduce nitrogen (N) losses and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture, particul...

  2. Advances in wireless sensor network communications – using garage-door remotes in the 1990s to satellites in 2021

    Modern precision agriculture demands knowledge of temporal and spatial soil moisture distribution that constantly changes with time and position due to varying climate, soil, and land cover. After the introduction of the earliest electronic dataloggers in the 1980s, measurement of time-varying soil ...

  3. Soil quality in the Wellington region

    Soil quality monitoring can be used to assess the soil’s capacity to maintain both farm productivity, and ecological function and environmental quality. Many unitary and regional councils in New Zealand have monitored soil quality since the late 1990s. In the Wellington region, dairy, mixed cropping...

  4. Modelling the effect of individual trees on slope stability in pastoral hill country

    Silvopastoralism in New Zealand’s highly erodible hill country is an important form of erosion and sediment-loss control. Despite a long history in improving sustainable land management and soil conservation, there has been relatively little quantitative work to establish the effectiveness of space-...

  5. Monitoring change in the availability of New Zealand’s Highly Productive Land resource

    Changes in our rural landscape often appear in a range of discussions across New Zealand. Hot topics in recent times have included the impacts of agricultural activities on waterways, and the impacts of reforestation on rural communities. The loss of farmland to urban and peri-urban expansion has al...

  6. Adding geomorphic context to S-map via soil landform trees

    Soils in New Zealand are mainly in youthful, geologically highly active landscapes, and are influenced by a plethora of erosion and deposition processes. Sharp contrasts in soil-forming factors across short distances mean that New Zealand shows tremendous diversity in soil-forming conditions and soi...

  7. Pacific Soils Portal

    Good quality soil information is available for many Pacific nations, with soil surveys having been completed for most countries. These surveys represent a large and prolonged investment. A conservative estimate of the investment by New Zealand since the 1950s indicates that it is approximately NZ$25...

  8. Book Review: The Soils of Aotearoa New Zealand

    The book emphasises that soils form the dynamic interface between geology and the biosphere, moderated by climate.

  9. More S-map support for farm-scale soil information

    A recent survey of S-map Online users and three focus groups made it clear that S-map needed to support the demand for soil information at the farm scale. As a result, two new S-map tools have been developed and added to our main delivery platform, S-map Online. Two more are under development.

  10. Lysimeter research identifying management practices to reduce nitrogen leaching

    Intensive agricultural practices, such as high animal stocking rates, use of nitrogen fertilisers, and irrigation with water and effluent, can lead to high leaching losses and consequent degradation of surface and groundwater quality. To reduce these environmental impacts, in accordance with the Nat...

  11. Dung beetles: NZ’s missing link to achieve sustainable pastoral agriculture?

    Dung beetles move dung from the soil surface by building tunnels, potentially increasing pathogen and nutrient leaching through the soil while decreasing pathogens and nutrients in runoff.

  12. Defining soil health from a Māori world view

    The Soil Health and Resilience: Oneone Ora, Tangata Ora programme is developing both the science to understand soil resilience and soil health and the kaupapa Māori research to explore soil health from a Te Ao Māori/mātauranga Māori perspective.

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