Signature Program in Water
By Kellie Potucek
Cristine Morgan, associate professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, was recently named to the Signature Program in water. After earning her bachelor of science degree from Texas A&M University, Morgan went on to receive both her master’s and doctorate in Soil Science at the University of Wisconsin. Her graduate research emphasized using landscape modeling approaches to address logistical, productive, and environmental issues in precision agriculture.
“Effective soil and water management at the landscape scale depends on high quality, cost-effective soils information, so farm and resource managers may successfully quantify biophysical processes,” Morgan explained.
Morgan’s modeling and measurement research focused on biophysical processes such as water transport and evapotranspiration in addition to mapping soil variability over agricultural landscapes. Her PhD research addressed understanding soil-water relations as affected by soil heterogeneity at two primary scales: 1) The mesoscale variability over farm fields that is associated with topography, land use, and soil formation processes, and 2) microscale variability related to macropores that strongly influence preferential flow of water and solutes through soil.
In her current position at Texas A&M University, Morgan’s research goals encompass several vital aspects of the soil-water relationship. Initially, Morgan will identify water and solute transport processes in agricultural landscapes and quantify how spatial and temporal variability of soil properties affect these processes. Through this research, Morgan will advance the understanding of the soil-water interface that affects nonpoint source pollution.
