We are delighted to have Olivia Webster working with us as our Callaghan Innovation Summer Intern for 2023-2024. The Callaghan Innovation internship is intended to enable students to experience research and development in a workplace, so we have her engaged in our Carbon Positive regenerative cropping trials and helping out with some weed electrocution research.
I have grown up in Hawke’s Bay. I have always been interested in the environment and the processes taken place around me. This is why I am currently studying a Bachelor of Environmental Science at Massey University. The main topics I have enjoyed learning about are soils and water quality. From working at LandWISE, I hope to get a better idea of what job I would like after I graduate.
Olivia has been running a soil aggregate slaking trial, drying peds, and capturing images over time to determine the degree of collapse in water. This is a relatively new test but the first we know of that can be done with minimal equipment using a standard methodology. A phone app “Slaker” does the image analysis and calculates the spread of peds. We’ll do a post on the results of this preliminary study once the number crunching is done.
Olivia is also becoming experienced in soil sampling, sample preparation and quick nitrate testing among other things! More to follow as the season unfolds.