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Dr Joe Collins

Agricultural Systems • Soil Health • Sustainability • Agronomy

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About

I am an agricultural researcher based at Harper Adams University in Shropshire, UK. I am interested in how farming systems can deliver productive, profitable, and environmentally sustainable outcomes. My work takes a systems-level approach to evaluate Conservation Agriculture in the UK, integrating soil science, agronomy, environmental assessment, and data analytics.

I combine field experimentation with quantitative modelling to explore how management practices influence soil health, greenhouse gas emissions, crop performance, and long-term resilience.

I am also a research scientist for the Earth Rover Program. We use non-invasive geo-physics based approaches to map and monitor soils and develop hardware and software tools for improved management of soils.

Research Project

A Systems-level Evaluation of Conservation Agriculture in the UK

My doctoral research investigated the performance of Conservation Agriculture compared with conventional arable management across agronomic, environmental, and economic dimensions.

  • How do reduced tillage and residue retention affect soil physical, chemical, and biological properties?
  • How does agronomic management differ between treatments?
  • What are the implications for greenhouse gas fluxes and carbon storage?
  • How do these practices influence farm profitability and risk under variable climate conditions?
Field experiment comparing conservation and conventional agriculture

Research Themes

Soil Health & Function

  • Soil structure & penetration resistance
  • Microarthropod communities & biodiversity indicators
  • Soil organic matter dynamics
  • Management impacts on soil resilience

Digital Soil Assessment

  • EC and gamma-ray spectrometry (GRS) scanning
  • Spatial modelling and kriging
  • Random Forest soil texture prediction

Environmental Assessment

  • Greenhouse gas flux measurement and interpretation
  • Life Cycle Assessment of arable systems
  • Ecotoxicity risk from pesticide use

Modelling & Simulation

  • Economic scenario analysis
  • Uncertainty and climate-shock simulations
  • Integrating biophysical + economic evidence

Methods & Tools

My work is strongly quantitative and reproducible. Key approaches include:

  • Multi-year field experiments under contrasting management
  • Spatial analysis in R (kriging, PCA, geostatistics)
  • Machine learning (e.g., Random Forest) for predictive soil mapping
  • Greenhouse gas monitoring
  • Life Cycle Assessment (openLCA / Brightway)
  • Economic modelling with stochastic simulations

Tools: R, Python, Git/GitHub, GIS.

Selected Outputs

Publications

  1. M. Tsekhmistrenko; Collins, J.; H. Bloem; T. Fallah; J. Ritsema; S. Jeffery; and T. Nissen-Meyer, Between two furrows: Soil bulk density from non-invasive seismology. Environmental Research Communications, 7, 111010 (2025). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ae1d27
  2. Muir, J. B.; Jeffery, S.; Collins, J.; Marks, A.; Brake, N.; Nissen-Meyer, T. Quantifying spatial peat depth with seismic micronodes and the implications for carbon stock estimates. Science of The Total Environment, 949, 174769 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.174769

Data & Code

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