Harden-Murrumburrah Landcare Group - Meeting and AGM

The Harden-Murrumburrah Landcare Group will be holding their AGM on Tuesday 27th March 2012, from 8.45am. The venue will be the Harden Country Club. Anyone interested is most welcome to attend.

Clive Kirkby (CSIRO Plant Indsutries) will be speaking on the topic of "Nutrients: The real limit to building soil carbon".

Clive Kirkby has been a soil scientist with CSIRO for more than 35 years based first in Adelaide, Griffith and now in Canberra. Clive has worked on aspects of soil organic matter for most of that time in both native and agricultural soils. Clive was involved in sampling the Harden long-term site in the mid 1990s and remained puzzled as to why organic matter failed to build-up on the stubble-retained-DD treatments even after many years. This led him to develop his hypothesis that a lack of nutrients (N,P and S) and not a lack of residue (carbon) was a key factor limiting more C sequestration in soils - as stable organic matter (humus) is composed of all of these elements in predictable ratios.

Clive has pursued that idea for his PhD studies through CSU while based at CSIRO in Canberra, and has used the Harden site throughout the work. His PhD has been submitted for examination and papers have been submitted for publication and Clive continues to use the Harden site in his Postdoctoral work with CSIRO. Clive will give an overview of his findings and their importance in relation to building soil organic matter in light of the Carbon Farming Initiative.