Dr. Alfred Hartemink is responsible for the soil science education and extension programme and Head of the World Soil Museum. He is guest lecturer at Wageningen University, the international courses at UNESCO-IHE in Delft and supervises MSc and PhD students and is registered researcher of the CT de Wit Research School for Production Ecology and Resource Conservation. In 2003 and 2004 he was visiting associate professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.
Alfred was trained as soil surveyor and has mapped large areas in East Africa. Over the past 10 years, he has worked on the application of soil science knowledge to real-work problems such as food production, nitrogen leaching, and sustainable land management. He has worked at the plot and pedon scale (Kenya, Tanzania), the farm and plantation scale (Indonesia, Papua New Guinea) and at the national and global scale (ISRIC). He has wide research experience in soil-land use dynamics research, in the quantification of changes in soil properties resulting from continuous cropping, focusing on the interaction and feedback mechanisms between land users and soil and land resources. He has over 140 publications including 5 books and many papers in international refereed journals (but also in NRC Handelsblad), that focus on an array of topics including: trends and developments in soil science, soil-land use dynamics, and high-input agriculture in tropical ecosystems. He is co-author of the widely circulated popular brochure “Soil – Earth’s living skin”.
He is Deputy Secretary General of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS), team leader of the Soils theme of the International Year of Planet Earth, and past Secretary and Treasurer of the Dutch Society of Soil Science. Through his IUSS and ISRIC activities, he leads a large national and international network of soil scientists and researchers, and a global ambassador for soil science for both the general public and the soil science community. In 2006, he initiated and edited the book “The future of soil science” which is currently used as founding document for discussions on the future strategies of the IUSS. He maintains active links with soil science institutions in over 100 countries. In combination with his research projects, attendance of several conferences per year, and his Geoderma editor-in-chief position, he is up-to-date with the scientific developments in soil science including the interactions with other disciplines. Dr Hartemink currently leads a global consortium that works on a large grant proposal, named GlobalSoilMap.net, that will be submitted for funding to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation.
Alfred is also book review editor of Geoderma, and editorial board member of Outlook on Agriculture, Pedosphere, Plagiary, and Encyclopedia of Soil Science and chief-editor of the book series Developments in Soil Science
His homepage is www.alfredhartemink.nl www.alfredhartemink.nl