Thijs Kelleners
Assistant Professor Soil Physics
Room 1015
BS Land and Water Resources Management, 1988
MS Soil Physics, 1993
PhD Environmental Sciences, 2001
From Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Phone: 307-766-4279
Email: tkellene@uwyo.edu

Home Page

Research Statement

As a soil physicist, I study water flow, heat transport, and solute transport in the soil. Soil is not an isolated medium. So I also look at the linkages with the atmosphere, the surrounding terrain, and the deeper sub-surface (e.g. the groundwater). I am particularly interested in modeling the soil-water-plant-atmosphere system, both at the field scale and at the catchment scale. Examples of my research in this area are: numerical modeling of water flow and solute transport in irrigated soils, prediction of agricultural drainage water quality, estimation of soil hydraulic properties through inverse methods, and modeling of the water and energy balance in snow dominated mountainous catchments. Within the soil physics community, much effort goes into the development of new measurement techniques to monitor the status of the soil and to measure flow and transport. Here I am interested in electromagnetic techniques as a tool to measure the soil dielectric properties. Information on the dielectric properties can be used to infer important soil physical parameters such as soil water content and soil bulk electrical conductivity. Examples of my work in this area are: development of an electric circuit model to describe the behavior of capacitance sensors in lossy dielectrics, measurement of the dielectric properties of clay, and development of a framework to better understand water content reflectometer measurements in soils.

Teaching: Starting in the 2006 fall semester, I teach a yearly soil physics course at the advanced undergraduate/graduate level (4100/5100). From 2007 onwards I will also teach a soil physics laboratory course (4105/5105) and a graduate course on the modeling of mass and energy transport in soils. 

back to faculty home

This site is maintained by Randy L. Anderson.