The soil zones of Saskatchewan: Creating art to visualize the concept.

Ken is a Professor Emeritus of Forest Soils from the Department of Soil Science at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. His research career investigated forestry impacts on soil properties and tree growth as well as quantifying carbon sequestration in forest shelterbelts in the prairies. However, it wasn't until he started incorporating art into his soil field courses in 2004 at the historic Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus, that he began his artistic adventure of creativity and play using paints, soil and charcoal.

Forest soil biotic communities show few responses to wood ash applications at multiple sites across Canada.

There is interest in utilizing wood ash as an amendment in forestry operations as a mechanism to return nutrients to soils that are removed during harvesting, with the added benefit of diverting this bioenergy waste material from landfill sites. Existing studies have not arrived at a consensus on what the effects of wood ash amendments are on soil biota. We collected forest soil samples from studies in managed forests across Canada that were amended with wood ash to evaluate the effects on arthropod, bacterial and fungal communities using metabarcoding of F230, 16S, 18S and ITS2 sequences as well as enzyme analyses to assess its effects on soil biotic function.

Shelterbelt Management Practices for Maximized Ecosystem Carbon Stocks on Agricultural Landscapes in Saskatchewan, Canada.

There is a significant knowledge gap in the area of management of the vast shelterbelt network currently existing on agricultural lands in Canada and across the world. Throughout eight decades of shelterbelt planting in Saskatchewan, Canada, there are no available records of shelterbelt management practices used by land managers, such as herbicides (H), fertilizers (F), irrigation (I), or tillage (T) applications, collectively referred to as HFIT management. The main objective of this large-scale study was to quantify the effects of HFIT management on shelterbelt carbon sequestration for six common tree and shrub species.