Kavindra Senaratna

SSS Soil System Sciences

The 2025 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Kavindra Senaratna for the poster/PICO entitled:

Characterizing Soil Respiration rates across different Land uses in a Tropical Urban Catchment (Senaratna, K. Y. K.; Te, S. H.; Fatichi, S.; Gin, K. Y. H.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Kavindra Senaratna is a PhD Candidate in Environmental Engineering at the National University of Singapore, working under the supervision Prof. Karina Gin and Prof. Simone Fatichi. Kavindra’s work mainly focuses on modelling terrestrial nutrient cycling in order to simulate the effects of climate change and changes in land use on nutrient loading into reservoirs. 

In the poster he presented at the EGU General Assembly 2025, he characterized the spatial and temporal variation of soil respiration, across different land uses, in a tropical urban catchment. In this study soil respiration was used as a proxy for the level of microbial activity in the soil, contributing to nutrient cycling. Results showed that the level of microbial activity was affected by land use changes and temperature, and that the level of microbial activity positively correlated with soil nitrate concentrations.