Aitkenhead, Jacqueline Associate Professor

My research focuses on carbon and nutrient dynamics in urban and rural soil, runoff and surface water. I am a PI on the Scotts Company/Texas A & M (24 plot) runoff research facility where I have examined runoff carbon and nutrient concentrations and exports from warm-season turfgrass under fertilization, wetting agent and deficit irrigation treatments. Other work has investigated extractable soil nutrients in Texas and Ghana under tillage and cropping treatments; and iron and zinc for sorghum in Mali. The investigation of carbon and nutrients released from decomposing mammals (mainly humans) with a view to estimating post-mortem interval is a relatively new field; decomposing mammals introduce another source of carbon and nutrients into the soil environment which is under researched. To expand soil science in forensics, soil has been used in training of human remains detection dogs in terms of odor and texture. An expansion of this forensic research is the development of use of UV-Vis-NIR spectroscopy with statistical models for trace soil evidence for a) determining percent similarity of soils and b) post-mortem interval prediction.