Dr. Yakov Pachepsky visited the Forschunsgzentrum Jülich between May 22 and June 11, 2016

From May 22 to June 11, 2016, Dr. Yakov Pachepsky worked at the Forschungszentrum Jülich as a visiting researcher. Dr. Yakov Pachepsky received his M.Sci. in Mechanics, his Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics, and his Dr. Sci. in Soil Science, all of which were obtained at the Moscow State University, Russia. Since 1999 he has been working as a research physical scientist at the Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory and as a soil scientist at the Environmental Microbial and Food Safety Lab of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Beltsville, Maryland.

During his stay at the Forschungszentrum he held two lectures. The first of which was held on June 1, 2016. It was titled “Pedotransfer in soil physics: status and applications”. The first part of the lecture gave a general introduction in estimating soil model parameters from easily available soil data, while the second part explicitly dealt with applications and the (mis-)interpretations of such estimates in soil-plant-atmosphere systems.

The second lecture was held within the framework of the IRTG Research Training Day “Soil moisture measurements and modelling”, which took place in the Forschungszentrum Jülich on June 10, 2016. The title of the presentation was “Concepts of scale and methods of scaling in soils” and provided a broad overview of the possibilities and constraints of scaling approaches in soil and environmental sciences. The lecture led to several fruitful discussions on the topic after the Research Training Day, which proved the topicality of scaling approaches for recent research questions.

Dr. Yakov Pachepsky was invited by Philipp Pohlig