Dr Uta Stockmann

Dr Uta Stockmann has joined the Soil Processes and Function Organisational Unit within CSIRO Agriculture and Food in January 2018. Prior, she worked as a Lecturer and Researcher in Soil-landscape modelling at The University of Sydney, Australia. Dr Uta Stockmann is Team Leader of Proximal Sensing in the Sustainability Research Program of CSIRO Agriculture and Food.

Throughout her academic career, Dr Uta Stockmann has examined the challenge of understanding the complex dynamics and the functioning of soil systems. She is originally from Germany and completed a Masters level degree in the natural sciences at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany in 2005 before starting a PhD project with The University of Sydney, Australia, in 2007. For her PhD she has conducted research on the quantification of pedogenic processes and the modelling of soil-landscape formation over millennial time scales. She has accumulated significant skills in using sophisticated laboratory techniques for dating soil (including the employment of physical and chemical analytical procedures), as well as undertaking spatial soil data analysis and modelling soil attributes in the landscape.

During her studies and academic work Dr Uta Stockmann substantiated a genuine interest in the functioning of ecosystems and developed an interest in the Australian agricultural sector. Her fields of speciality include quantitative pedology, proximal soil sensing and digital soil mapping. Her current research interests comprise of using novel proximal soil sensing technologies to support rapid and cost-effective i) assessment of the soil condition and function to improve decision-making in agriculture, ii) natural resources accounting, iii) land suitability assessment and iv) provenance screening.

In her recent research she has been looking into suitable approaches for reliably estimating plant available water capacity for farm soils to help growers and advisors improve the quality of yield forecasts used to inform on management decisions; the delineation of environmental signatures to underpin the rapid determination of the geographic origin of produce; and approaches for rapid and cost-effective soil condition and function measurement to underpin natural capital accounting and soil assessment and monitoring. Uta is also leading ACIAR funded work that contributes towards building soil resilience and adaptation to support agriculture in the South Pacific region amidst climate change.