Katharina Meurer

October 2022 Associate professor (docent)

Subject area: Soil Sciences with specialisation in Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition (markvetenskap inriktning växtnäringslära)

Since October 2020 Researcher at the Department of Soil and Environment (Markensnäringsomsättning, Prof. Anke Herrmann)

November 2018 - October 2020 Researcher at the Department of Soil and Environment (Biogeofysik, Prof. Nicholas Jarvis; Markmekanik och jordbearbetning, Prof. Thomas Keller)

October 2016 - October 2018 Post-doc at the Department of Ecology (Systemekologi, Prof. Thomas Kätterer)

June 2016 PhD defense

Thesis: Measurement and modelling of land use specific greenhouse gas emissions from soils in Southern Amazonia, Brazil.

June 2015 - August 2016 Researcher within the joint project Carbiocial

July 2012 - May 2015 PhD student within the joint research project Carbiocial (BMBF). My subproject (SP02) dealt with the quantification and modelling of  greenhouse gas emissions (mainly N2O) from soils in Southern Amazonia, Brazil. The focus of the research was on different land uses in the two Federal States Mato Grosso (cerrado, cattle pastures, and cropland) and Pará (rainforest and cattle pastures).

October 2010 - June 2012 Master studies at the TU Braunschweig, Germany

Specializations: Soil and land management; Environmental Modelling

Master thesis: Inverse modelling of water transport in large lysimeters of the research station Zuerich Reckenholz

October 2007 - July 2010 Bachelor studies at the TU Braunschweig, Germany

My research interest is in the cycling of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in soil and the mathematical description of underlying processes. This involves C sequestration and soil organic matter, as well as fluxes of greenhouse gases (GHG) from the soil to the atmosphere. Resulting from my education at the TU Braunschweig (Germany), I worked with model application and adaptation to observations of water transport (master thesis) and N2O fluxes (PhD thesis) (see Meurer et al. 2016a, Meurer et al. 2016b, Meurer et al. 2017). The focus was on forest soils, as well as agricultural soils, i.e. grass- and croplands.

During my first Post-doc at the Department of Ecology (October 2016 - October 2018; Prof. Thomas Kätterer), I mainly worked on SOC sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions from mineral but also organic soils under agricultural use (see Meurer et al. 2018, Meurer et al. 2019, Rychel et al. 2020 and Berglund et al. 2021).

Between November 2018 and October 2020, I worked as researcher at the Department of Soil and Environment in the Biogeophysics (Prof. Nicholas Jarvis) and Soil mechanics (Prof. Thomas Keller) groups. My research focus was on the modelling of soil structure dynamics and the two-way interactions between soil structure and carbon storage (see Meurer et al. 2020a and Meurer et al. 2020b).

In October 2020, I joined the group of Prof. Anke Herrmann (Soil Nutrient Cycling) as researcher and continue my work on soil structure effects on carbon turnover. Since September 2020, I am Director of Studies for undergraduate education (Bachelor and Master level).

Further, I am strongly involved in the European Joint Programme on Soil (EJP SOIL; https://ejpsoil.eu) and co-lead of WP 7 (Synthesis and knowledge integration - access to infrastructure). Within the EJP SOIL, I participate in research projects on the effect of pure and mixed cultures on root-derived C storage (MaxRoot-C and MIXROOT-C) and C-use efficiency (EnergyLink), as well as sustainable soil management (CLIMASOMA (finished; Blanchy et al. 2023), SoilX).

Since October 2022, I am Associate Professor (docent) in Soil Sciences with specialisation in Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition (markvetenskap inriktning växtnäringslära).

Course lead

Since October 2020: director of studies for basic education and course leader for independent projects (självständigt arbete; Bachelor and Master Theses) supervised within the Department of Soil & Environment (30 credits)

Since October 2021: course leader and responsible of the master course “Research Internship” (MV0208, 15 credits).

Teaching

MSc courses

Soil biology and biogeochemical cycles (BI1322, 15 credits): lectures, literature seminar, journal club paper discussion on "Human impacts"

BSc courses

Soil Science for Environment and Water (MV0192, 15 credits): field exercise, lecture

The soil process model CANDY and balance model simulating turnover processes in topsoil for carbon nitrogen and phosphorus (C-N-P) are available at https://www.somod.info