Staff

Bertin Takoutsing is an Associate Scientist in land health management working with the World Agroforestry Centre (Cameroon). He is a PhD candidate at the Wageningen University and research and will be visiting ISRIC for a period of six months (March – August 2019) to further develop his research proposal on new digital soil mapping approaches that account for uncertainties in soil observations to support sustainable agricultural intensification in West and Central Africa’.

Yuri is an Environmental Engineer with a background in Remote Sensing and GIS. Ph.D. candidate at Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro with the main topic in Proximal Soil Sensing. Also deals with the Brazilian soil database aiming to contribute to the Universal Soil Classification System. And for six months, from February 2019, join the ISRIC as Researcher Guest to contribute in modeling and Digital Soil Mapping

[2016/10 - present]

Ad has more than 30 years experience in soil, plant and water analysis, and assessment of reliability of laboratory data, including consultancy in laboratory methods and quality management in developing countries.

Ad joined the International Soil Museum in Utrecht in 1974. His main focus was: data quality, documentation, and the development and use of collections.

Ad retired in September 2016 after which he continued as a guest researcher, providing special support to the DATA project.

Ad speaks Dutch, English and German.

[04-07/2017]

Angela is a Professor of Soil Science in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. As a guest researcher, Angela is working on the development of a gridded soil map for Saskatchewan, including identification and evaluation of the optimum Digital Soil Mapping technique(s) for the low-relief Canadian prairies. She is also interested in collaborating on development of interoperable soil information systems to facilitate integration among different data repositories, nationally and internationally.

Scientific support is provided by Gerard Heuvelink, Niels Batjes, and Eloi Ribeiro.

[01-12/2017]

Francis Silatsa is a Cameroonian PhD student with a MSc in soil science. During his stay at ISRIC he will complete and validate the soil profiles database, and learn and use data analysis techniques for the production of soil information (maps) for the whole of Cameroon at a spatial resolution of 100 m and a depth of 200 cm and for the following soil analytical properties: soil texture (sand, silt, and clay), pHwater, pHKCl, C, N, CEC, Ca, Mg, K, Na and P.

[2014/01 - 2014/12]

Alessandro came to ISRIC as a guest researcher sponsored by the CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil. He was a PhD student at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; part of his PhD research project at ISRIC was developed under the supervision of Dr. Gerard Heuvelink.

The general objective of his research was to evaluate the main sources of uncertainty in digital soil mapping. 

[2014/03 - 2014/04]

Andrew came to ISRIC as a Postdoc Researcher from World Agroforesty Centre (ICRAF, Kenya). Andrew extended the soil spectroscopy package and assisted the ISRIC-AfSIS team in developing and documenting a Soil Spectral Reference Library as a part of the GSIF package and providing a well-organized spectral reference library for use by AfSIS for digital mapping purposes.

[2011/01 - 2012/01]

Cristine, an Associate Professor at the Soil Science Department of Federal University of Viçosa, Minas Gerais (Brazil), worked on the World Soil Museum during her sabbatical at ISRIC.

Contact: http://www.dps.ufv.br/?page_id=447

[2010/04 - 2012/04]

Nynke, an employee of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), worked on a part-time basis as a guest researcher at ISRIC. She contributed to a cooperation project with PBL on ‘Global Modelling of Soil Degradation and the Impact on Ecosystem Services.’

While at ISRIC, she worked mainly with Stephan Mantel.

[2013/08 - 2015/04]

Eliana first came to ISRIC in 2012 to work on her PhD (Fed. University of Viçosa) on “digital soil mapping” and to acquire experience in producing soil property and class maps with special attention for the Rio Doce Basin, Minas Gerais. Her stay was funded by the Brazilian CAPES foundation.

After having obtained her Doctorate, Eliana returned to ISRIC as a guest researcher (2013-2015) for further research on ‘Pedometric Mapping for Brazil’.

[2014/04 - 2014/07]

Kevin is a PhD student from France. He worked on the development of digital soil mapping methods for soil properties to improve soil data at the regional scale.

His advisors while at ISRIC were Gerard Heuvelink and Tom Hengl.

[2009/05 - 2010/04]

Laura, from Spain, an agronomist by training, worked as a Guest Researcher on “soil carbon dynamics”. This included the development and testing of a summary-model of soil organic carbon dynamics focusing on defined land use changes in the Brazilian Cerrado.

An important aim of the ‘scholarship’ was to a write peer-reviewed paper on this subject. In addition to this, several proposals for follow up studies were prepared respectively submitted for possible external funding.

ISRIC provided a stipend, working facilities and scientific support. Niels Batjes acted as her supervisor.

[2013/05 - 2013/06]

Milan is a teaching assistant in Cartography, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Department of Geodesy and Geoinformatics, University of Belgrade.

As a guest researcher, he worked on Digital Soil Mapping; scientific support was provided by Tom Hengl.

[2011/03 - 2011/08]

Nikolay, a guest researcher from Moscow State University, worked on the development of a SOTER database for a section of Russia. He also contributed to field work in Russia for the SOLEX project.

Scientific support was provided by Vincent van Engelen and Koos Dijkshoorn.

[2011/03 - 2011/09]

Nikoo Hamzehpour, a guest researcher from Iran (Tarbiat Modares University), worked on her PhD project "Evaluating spatial variability of soil salinity in Uromieh Plain".

Scientific advise was provided by Tom Hengl.

[2011/01 - 2011/03]

Dr Paddikal Chandran came to further his knowledge of soil and terrain databases (SOTER) and to get acquainted with various research institutes in the Netherlands.

During his stay Dr Chandran has developed an updated SOTER database for the Indo Gangetic Plains (IGP), India, building on earlier SOTER-related work for the international GEF-SOC project. Dr Chandran obtained funds for his visit to ISRIC under the World Bank funded National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP); ISRIC provided facilities and scientific support (Koos Dijkshoorn).

[2013/09 - 2013/12]

Dr Priyabrata Santra came to ISRIC to learn advanced research areas in geoinformatics. He worked on spatial assessment of soil properties using digital soil mapping techniques. Soil organic carbon content has been assessed by him at six different spatial scales starting from farmer’s field to national scale in India using geostatistical techniques. He also developed a web based GIS for Arid Western India to estimate soil water retention based on pedotransfer function model and digital soil maps.

His visit at ISRIC was funded by world bank funded NAIP project in ICAR, India.

His research work at ISRIC was supported by Gerard Heuvelink and Niels Batjes.

[2013/09 - 2013/12]

Dr Uttam Kumar Mandal, a soil scientist by profession, came to ISRIC to get acquainted with advanced applications of Geo-informatics in the field of natural resources management. He learnt geo-statistical soil mapping techniques and developed the soil organic carbon stock map for Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh. He also worked on the digital soil and terrain (SOTER) units for West Bengal state. Further, he assessed spatio-temporal changes in land use land cover of Sundarbans using satellite imagery.

His visit at ISRIC was funded by the World Bank funded NAIP Project under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

His work at ISRIC was facilitated by Gerard Heuvelink and Niels Batjes.

[2014/10-2015/10]

Wei came to ISRIC as a guest researcher sponsored by the Chinese Scholarship Council.

Wei is an associate professor at the Beijing Normal University, China, and participated in several ongoing projects, such as Global Soil Information Facilities at ISRIC under the supervision of Dr. Tom Hengl and Dr. Gerard Heuvelink.

Dr Shangguan's research interests includes soil geography and soil physics, focusing on soil mapping.

During his guest research at ISRIC, Wei worked on a mapping the global soil depth and the soils of China.

Kees is a Dutch MSc student of Wageningen University who will be working on the evaluation of methods for uncertainty quantification in Digital Soil Mapping (DSM). One particularly promising approach in DSM is the use of Machine Learning. This can automate the construction of soil models by training on soil forming covariates (e.g. remotely sensed data layers). DSM through Machine Learning displays a high potential for soil property prediction, but the quantification of the uncertainties in DSM interpolations remains challenging. The research could provide useful strategies for ISRIC's SoilGrids project.

[2019]

Rik is a Dutch MSc student at Wageningen University. He holds a BSc degree in Soil, Water, Atmosphere and a MA degree in Landscape History. Rik will be working on a space-time convolutional neural network for the digital soil mapping of soil organic carbon and test this methodology for Argentina. By bringing the spatial context of a point into the modelling stage this machine learning technique can help to more accurately model and thus understand trends in SOC. The research is supervised by Gerard Heuvelink and Laura Poggio.

[2018]

Wietse is a Dutch master student working on a soil mapping project in southern Colombia. His thesis is part of a larger project by CIAT and partners which aims to evaluate land use types in terms of soil quality and climate change mitigation potential. To this end active and total carbon have been measured, which remain to be mapped to cover the whole study area. The soil chemical research part is supervised by Mirjam Pulleman (Soil Biology and Biological Soil Quality) and Gerard Heuvelink supervises the subsequent mapping. 

Yingxia, is a PhD candidate at WUR and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) (China). She is supervised by Gerard Heuvelink, Zhanguo Bai and Ping He (CAAS). She got her MSc in plant nutrition. The general objective of her PhD research is to do space-time statistical analysis and modelling of nitrogen use efficiency indicators of China.

[since 2013]

Marcos is a guest PhD candidate from Argentina. He works for the Soil Institute of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), which grants his studies. His thesis is about integrating information on soil forming processes in digital soil mapping. Scientific support is provided by Gerard Heuvelink.

Marcos' WUR staff profile: https://www.wur.nl/en/Persons/Marcos-E-ME-Marcos-Angelini.htm

[since 2014]

I am a Dutch PhD student, working on geostatistics and more specific the use of Bayesian algorithms to increase the reliability of soil maps and landuse maps. Beside ISRIC, this PhD project is also supported by the Soil Geography and Landscape group (Wageningen UR) and by Alterra (Wageningen UR). Supervisors are Gerard Heuvelink and Dick Brus.

[since 2016]

Mirjam grew up in the west of the Netherlands where her parents own a greenhouse. So food production has always been an important part of her life. She graduated from Wageningen University in Plant Sciences in 2015 and started her PhD in 2016. During this PhD she will do research on the effects of micro nutrient fertilization on crop growth in SSA. This project is supervised by Ellis Hoffland (Soil Quality). Bas Kempen (ISRIC) will assist in the soil mapping that is part of this PhD.

[2016]

Job was doing his MSc thesis work on the spatial prediction of the availability of zinc for plant uptake. He used a prediction model based on soil data from IFDC, own soil analysis, the QUEFTS model (nutrient uptake + growth) and if possible environmental covariates. Case study was on Sub-Saharan Africa (Rwanda) where zinc deficiency is most pressing. His supervisors were Ellis Hoffland (Soil Quality) and Bas Kempen (ISRIC).

[2008]

Liesbeth did her internship on the Green Water Credits program working on the Upper Tana basin project area in Kenya. Scientific support was provided by Sjef Kauffman and David Dent.

[2009]

[2012]

Sabastine worked on Functional Digital Soil Mapping for the prediction of available water capacity in Nigeria The findings of his MSc study were published in the Vadose Zone Journal. Scientific support was provided by Hannes Reuter.

[2013]

Siyu studied Geo-information Science at Wageningen University. Her MSc-research was on “Digital Soil Mapping for Africa”. She analysed the usefulness of various statistical models to establish the relationship between the dependent variable (soil property) and explanatory variables (environmental covariates). Guidance was provided by Gerard Heuvelink.

[2014]

Soufiane was targeting international experiences with cutting edge technologies in Water and land management; that’s why choosing the Netherlands and specifically ISRIC, by working on Green Water Credits in Algeria and RECARE project in Europe under the supervision of Godert van Lynden and Thomas Caspari. Soufiane has a background of 5 years in water and environmental engineering and training fields in some arid regions in Morocco that resorted to reverse osmosis desalination and other measures to maintain their agricultural activity and socio-economic stability. Besides, Soufiane speaks Arabic, English, French and he’s determined to learn Dutch.

[2014]

Susanne was an MSc student at the Soil Geography and Landscape Group of Wageningen University. She was doing her internship with the Soil Geography team of Alterra and ISRIC. Susanne investigated the benefit of using legacy soil data in addition to contemporary soil data for updating the national soil map of the Netherlands with digital soil mapping. She considered three scenario’s: i) modelling with legacy data only, ii) modelling with contemporary data only, iii) modelling with both legacy and contemporary data. For each scenario the map accuracy was determined from an independent validation dataset. Supervisors were Dick Brus and Bas Kempen.

[2014]

Thanos was doing his master thesis research on developing a framework for the generalization of the SoilGrid maps, according to the user's zoom level. He was a master student of Geo-information science at Wageningen University, with special interest in geo-scripting. Guidance and scientific support was provided by Gerard Heuvelink and Sytze de Bruin (GRS department).

[2013]

Charl worked on developing or applying a current method which includes soil legacy maps into Digital Soil Mapping and then compare how accurate it is with the current Digital Soil Mapping. Charl was supervised by Johan Leenaars, Gerard Heuvelink and Sytze de Bruin (GRS).

[2015]

Iolanda sought assistance from ISRIC staff to help her with the Irish soil attribute maps development, such as pH, soil depth, soil organic carbon. She applied pedometric techniques as used by ISRIC staff (Dr. Gerard Heuvelink, Dr. Bas Kempen and Dr. Tom Hengl), using Irish SIS data to develop the soil attribute maps. She helped to contribute data for the development and validation of ISRIC map production, with 200 profiles from the Irish SIS. During the stay at ISRIC she worked on map production and validation activities.

[2016]

Olaf graduated from Wageningen University in International Land and Water Management and was doing an internship at ISRIC. Working under the ISQAPER project, he was involved in a meta-analysis of the effects of agricultural practices on key soil quality indicators in major pedo-climatic zones across Europe and China. His focus was on three parts: Identify major agricultural management practices (top five) in Europe and China; Search relevant literature on the effects of management practices on soil quality (indicators); Conduct a meta-analysis of the effects of one up to five major management practices on the defined soil quality indicators. Olaf was supervised by Zhanguo Bai and Thomas Caspari.

International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), Accra, Ghana

Scientific Affairs Officer, Knowledge Management, Science and Technology Unit,

UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Bonn, Germany

Director, School of Global Environmental Sustainability
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA

Full Professor at the Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland