Agroecology Lab

 

Chau Minh Khoi

Ph.D. student

e-mail:
mkhchau@ucdavis.edu 		Resume (PDF)

EDUCATION
Ph.D., Applied Biological Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. 2006.
Dissertation: "Management of Chaetoceros calcitrans growth in hypersaline Artemia franciscana ponds by optimizing nitrogen and phosphorus availability".

M.Sc., Soil Science, Swedish Universities of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden. 2000.
Thesis: "Nitrogen mineralization in relation to soil organic carbon and its C:N ratio in Acid Sulfate Soils from the Mekong Delta area – Vietnam".

B.Eng., Agronomy, Can Tho Univeristy, Vietnam. 1995.
Thesis: "Diagnosis of nutrient deficiency for Citrus by leaf analyses".

RESEARCH INTERESTS
My areas of interest are how soil properties, land use management and environmental conditions affect the turnover of soil organic matter, with a particular focus on the relationship between the quality of soil organic matter and soil nitrogen (N) cycling processes. Also my interests address on the mechanisms that soil organic matter pools contribute to the production and fluxes of gases, ie. CO2 and CH4 that are now globally discussed in the theme of "green-house" gases and global warming.

My previous work used incubation approaches and isotope 15N dilution method to measure the gross rates of N mineralization/immobilization in the soils posing different properties, ie. acid sulfate soils and the soils submerged under extremely high saline conditions, and being exploited in different periods of time for rice production or other aqua-cultural purposes. The studies determined whether the quantity and quality of soil organic carbon and organic N pools can explain the differences in soil’s capacity to supply available N. The obtained results developed some optimal procedures to predict the soil capacity in supplying available N under the investigated conditions based on analyze some certain soil parameters, including labile soil organic matter an labile soil organic N.

I am currently working with Prof. Johan Six in the project titled: "Control of vertical soil variation on temporal variation of soil CO2 production and emissions". This project aims at elucidating and quantifying C dynamics at different soil depths and its direct influence on surface CO2 fluxes from hourly to decadal time scales.

Looking forward to my future work, I am interested in elucidating the causes from the decline in soil organic matter where soils are intensively exploited for agriculture (e.g. continuously triple rice crops per year as in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam) and chemical fertilizers are mostly applied. Another interest focuses on exploring the optimal approaches to study on quantifying the gases, especially N2O and CH4 produced and fluxing from the lowland rice fields where soils are permanently submerged during year.