Boettinger - Research
Back to Boettinger Lab GroupJanis Boettinger directs research activities that address the origin, spatial distribution, and function of soils in ecosystems. Our research can be grouped into two broad topics:
- Digital soil mapping, modeling, and assessment
- Soil-plant-landscape relationships
Currently funded research projects in these areas include:
- Shrubby Reed-Mustard Habitat: Parent Material, Soil and Landscape Characteristics (US Fish and Wildlife Service; Dr. Laureen Kelly, Post-doctoral researcher)
- Digital Soil Mapping and Value-Added Soil Information for Utah's Public Lands (USDI Bureau of Land Management)
- Colby Brungard, doctoral candidate, is conducting several related research projects in the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau, funded currently by the Bureau of Land Management and formerly by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
Other research projects include:
- Refining a Pressure-Calcimeter Method for Inorganic Carbon Analysis (Brook Fonnesbeck, undergraduate researcher)
- Digital Soil Mapping Techniques for Soil Survey Updates in the Western USA (Suzann Kienast-Brown, Doctoral student; Soil Scientist, GIS and Remote Sensing Specialist for USDA NRCS)
- Refining the Soil Survey of Fort Bliss to Support Ecological Sites on Otero Mesa, NM (Jeremiah Armentrout, undergraduate researcher)
- Proximal Sensing of Soil Carbon with VNIR Spectroscopy (LabSpec 2500 VNIR on loan from the National Soil Survey Laboratory; Colby Brungard, doctoral candidate)
- GlobalSoilMap.net: A global project to create and deliver a global map of soil properties at 90-spatial resolution (Janis Boettinger, Professor)