Professor Troy Baisden
Bay of Plenty Regional Council Chair in Lake and Freshwater Science
Qualifications: PhD 2000 University of California, Berkeley
About Troy
Troy Baisden specialises in understanding the flow of nutrients, water and carbon through terrestrial ecosystems and resulting impacts in freshwater. He spent the last decade at GNS Science’s National Isotope Centre, ensuring New Zealand has access to challenging isotope techniques combined with the ‘big-picture’ understanding required to apply them to the nation’s most important environmental issues. This has involved sophisticated instrumental techniques, yet the most crucial understanding often evolves from large scale environmental and economic data, viewed in a policy, social and cultural context. His experience cuts across major environmental issues, starting with acid rain in the United States, and bringing parallels from climate change research to managing water quality in a catchment context.
Troy wants to see science enable innovative approaches to water management that create flexibility, efficiency and resilience. He has an interest in analytics and science policy as they relate to addressing global change issues. He holds a PhD from the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also an Investigator in Te Pūnaha Matatini, the Centre of Research Excellence on networks and complexity. He now leads the Lakes Ecosystem Research New Zealand (LERNZ) group.
Troy makes an effort to make the process of putting the pieces of environmental science accessible – check out his articles in The Conversation, and the resources below.
You can follow Troy's social media channels, Facebook, Twitter, and his blogs Land2Water and Data Environment.
Research Supervised
PhD
- Dare, James (in progress). Using low-cost sensor technology to understand contaminant signatures and flow pathways in river systems.
- Yulianti, Meti (in progress). Development of novel measurement to examine soil erosion and sediment processes on freshwater ecosystems.
MScRes
- Lyon, Victoria (in progress).
- Kaelin, Nicola (in progress).
- Eyberg, Claire (2020). Variation in nitrate sources and delivery in space and time within the 389 ha Lake Okaro catchment.
MSc
- Chen, Teng Chris (in progress).
- Sanson, Courtney (in progress).
Teaching Commitments
Expertise
Agriculture and Biosystems; Climate; Environment; Environment Issues; Environmental Change; Environmental Impacts; Environmental Science and Technology; Geochemical Environment; Globalisation; Knowledge Management; Natural Resources; Radiocarbon Dating; Remote Sensing; Science; Statistics; Sustainability
Biogeochemistry; Ecosystem Science; Freshwater; Soil; Catchment; Lake; LERNZ; Nitrogen; Isotopes; Tracers
Recent Publications
Lee, J. E., Brook, E. J., Bertler, N. A. N., Buizert, C., Baisden, T., Blunier, T., . . . Winstrup, M. (2020). An 83 000-year-old ice core from Roosevelt Island, Ross Sea, Antarctica. Climate of the Past, 16(5), 1691-1713. doi:10.5194/cp-16-1691-2020
Rayner, S., Clough, T. J., Baisden, T., & Moir, J. (2020). Can ruminant urine-N rate and plants affect nitrate leaching and its isotopic composition?. New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, 63(1), 87-105. doi:10.1080/00288233.2019.1648302
Brahney, J., Ballantyne, A. P., Vandergoes, M., Baisden, T., & Neff, J. C. (2019). Increased Dust Deposition in New Zealand Related to Twentieth Century Australian Land Use. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. doi:10.1029/2018JG004627
Wells, N. S., Clough, T. J., Johnson-Beebout, S. E., Elberling, B., & Baisden, W. T. (2019). Effects of denitrification and transport on the isotopic composition of nitrate (δ18O, δ15N) in freshwater systems. Science of the Total Environment, 651, 2228-2234. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.065