Dr Hamish Cresswell: Stream Leader, On-Farm Water Use, Sustainable Agriculture Flagship

Dr Hamish Cresswell’s research is at the interface between agricultural production systems and catchment hydrological processes.

• 23 September 2009 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications
• Achievements
• Professional activities

Dr Hamish Cresswell’s primary research areas include:

• interactions between agricultural land use and soil water
• land use planning
• soil water balance measurement and modelling
• measurement and prediction of soil hydraulic properties.

Current activities

Dr Cresswell leads the research Stream On-Farm Water Use in the new Sustainable Agriculture Flagship.

Dr Cresswell is leading development of a national strategy for research, development and extension into Water Use in Agriculture on behalf of the Primary Industries Steering Committee.

He also contributes to the Landscape Logic Commonwealth Environmental Research Facilities (CERF) project on Catchment Sediment and Nutrient management, developing conceptual models of catchment nutrient movement and index-based models to identify critical source areas for nutrient pollution.

Background

Dr Hamish Cresswell’s soil physics research has included combining soil hydraulic property measurement and prediction with field monitoring and the use of soil water simulation models to evaluate alternative strategies for land use and management.

He has contributed to assimilation of knowledge on land resource assessment, surface water hydrology, salinity and groundwater, biodiversity restoration, and agricultural production into spatial catchment land use options.

Dr Cresswell has 20 years of research experience. He has been a research group leader in CSIRO Land and Water from 2005-08, and contributed as a subject matter expert (SME) for the Project Systems area of the CSIRO BETR program from 2007-08.

Academic qualifications

Dr Cresswell has been awarded the following degrees:

• Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Honours) from Lincoln College in 1986
• Doctor of Philosophy in Natural Resources Engineering, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand in 1990.

Achievements

Dr Cresswell established and led the Heartlands Initiative, a participative research and development program on multi-objective land use planning, helping to use scientific information to better prioritise investment in natural resource management.

He has successfully led numerous other projects that have contributed to improved soil management, design of improved farming systems, better prioritisation of land use change, management of dryland salinity, and provision of soil hydraulic data.

He has been influential in linking farming systems research with catchment-scale natural resource management.

Dr Cresswell is the author of 25 journal papers, 13 book chapters, 37 conference papers, 13 technical Reports and 16 client reports or brochures, his current lifetime citation count is ~320.

Recognition of his expertise includes:

• invited keynote speaker at the Fenner Conference on the Environment, The Art and Science of Environmental Decision Making, in March 2009
• invited speaker, Sixth International Association for Landscape Ecology World Congress in 2003.

Professional activities

 Dr Cresswell is a member of the:

• Australian Soil Science Society
• Soil Science Society of America.

Find out more about CSIRO Land and Water.