Team
Yakun Zhang (Principal Investigator)
Dr. Zhang is interested in pedology, digital soil mapping, remote sensing, soil spectroscopy. Her research integrates proximal and remote sensing and machine learning to improve the understanding of soil processes and monitoring and mapping of soil variations under climate change and human disturbance.
Alfred Hartemink (Co-PI)
Dr. Hartemink is a professor in pedology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Alfred’s research focuses on pedology, soil carbon, digital soil mapping, tropical soils, history and philosophy of soil science.
Malithi Weerasekara (PhD student)
Malithi is interested in modeling and mapping soil properties and processes using remote sensing and machine learning. Her current research focuses on using soil MIR spectra to predict various soil properties, soil health indicators, soil classification across the US and developing a web-based portal to automate the modeling process. She received her B.S. in Environmental Conservation and Management at the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka and M.S. in Environmental Hazards and Risks Management at Université Côte d’Azur (UCA) in France.
Jingyi Huang (Advisory committee)
Dr. Huang is an assistant professor in soil physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is working on several projects following a data-model integration framework. This includes developing novel in situ soil sensors and fusion of ground and remotely sensed big geospatial datasets to improve our ability to monitor, model, and understand the terrestrial water cycles (e.g., soil moisture, evapotranspiration, groundwater) and the coupled carbon (e.g., soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions), nutrient (e.g., soil nitrate leaching and management), and energy (e.g., wildfire disturbance on soil ecosystem services) cycles from the field to global scales.
Skye Wills (Advisory committee)
Dr. Wills is the National Leader for Soil Science Research at the Soil and Plant Science Division, National Soil Survey Center, USDA-NRCS. Her research focuses on applying spatial statistics and survey design to assess soil change. She received her PhD in Soil Science from Iowa State University.
Jonathan Maynard (Advisory committee)
Dr. Maynard is a Research Soil Scientist with USDA-NRCS at the National Soil Survey Center. He works at the interface between soil/ecological sciences and big data analytics to generate science-based solutions for sustainable land management. His research focuses on large-scale spatial modeling of soil and ecological resources, quantifying patterns and processes of soil and ecosystem change. His expertise is in pedology, soil databases, spatial and statistical analysis, remote sensing, and machine learning.
Rich Ferguson (Advisory committee)
Dr. Ferguson is an analytical chemist and supervisor of Kellogg Soil Survey Laboratory with USDA-NRCS. His research interest involves applying soil spectroscopy in soil properties estimation and soil survey.