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Daniel Giménez is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences. He is interested in the movement of water and transport of chemicals in soils at the profile, landscape and continental scales. He and his students conduct research on the physical properties of engineered and natural soils. A topic of interest is the quantification of the effect of land use types (e.g., golf course, forest, and agriculture) on hydraulic properties such as infiltration, saturated hydraulic conductivity and water retention. A variety of field and laboratory tools are used in these investigations, including Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Time Domain Reflectrometry (TDR), X-Ray Computed Tomography (CT), and instrumentation to automatically measure infiltration and soil water retention properties.
Soil Structure
The arrangement of soil pores and solids, known as soil structure, determines the movement water, gases and energy through soil, and the habitat of roots and microorganisms. Daniel Giménez uses 3D images to characterize the geometry of pore systems and to relate the spatial arrangement of pores to soil function.
Global Change and Soils
Increases in temperature and shifts in precipitation regimes are altering ecosystems and impacting ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration. Dr. Giménez’s latest research is focused on investigating the effects of elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and precipitation amount on the distribution of carbon in soils and its impact in soil porosity and hydraulic properties.
