Brent Clothier – Vice President
HortResearch

Brent is a soil physicist and environmental scientist who is Science Leader of the Sustainable Land Use team within HortResearch. He is based in Palmerston North.

Brent has a BSc (Hons) (1974) from Canterbury University, and a PhD (1977) and DSc (2002) in soil science from Massey University. Brent is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Soil Science Society of America, the American Agronomy Society, the New Zealand Soil Science Society, and the American Geophysical Union. He received the Don & Betty Kirkham Soil Physics Award from the Soil Science Society of America in 2000, and the Prescott Medal of the Australian Society of Soil Science in 2001. Brent is on the Council of the Academy of Fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and he is Chair of Commission 4.1 (Soil & the Environment) of the International Union of Soil Science.

In his 30-year research career, Brent has published over 175 scientific papers on the movement and fate of water and chemicals in production systems and the environment. He has led projects on risk assessments of land-use practices and the protection of soils, surface water, and groundwater from contamination, both in New Zealand, and in the Pacific islands. Brent is the Programme Leader of New Zealand’s major soil-science research programme SLURI (Sustainable Land Use Research Initiative www.sluri.org.nz)

Brent is Joint Editor-in-Chief of Agricultural Water Management, and he is a corresponding member of the Editorial Board of the Australian Journal of Soil Research.