Dr. Brigitta Tóth#

AFFILIATION: Institute for Soil Sciences and Agricultural Chemistry, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Herman Ottó út 15., Budapest, Hungary, H-1022 and Department of Crop Production and Soil Science, Georgikon Faculty, University of Pannonia, Deák F. u. 16, Keszthely, Hungary, H-8360
LINK TO WEBPAGE: http://mta-taki.hu/en/tagok/toth-brigitta
FIELD OF SCHOLARSHIP: Agricultural sciences

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:

Brigitta Tóth is a senior soil scientist of Institute for Soil Sciences and Agricultural Chemistry, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (ISSAC CAR HAS), Budapest and adjunct professor at the University of Pannonia (UP) in Keszthely, Hungary. She obtained her PhD in soil physics in 2011. Her main research focus is on obtaining information on soil hydraulic properties at local, regional and continental scale to improve our understanding on the role of soils in agricultural production and ecosystems services, and their influence on drought, excess inland water and erosion sensitivity.

DETAILS OF RESEARCH:

In her PhD research she described with mathematical formulas the relationship between simple soil characteristics and soil hydraulic properties. During her PhD studies she was a grant holder at the Politecnico di Milano (Italy) collaborating on joint research publications. She participated in the development of European Hydropedological Data Inventory (EU-HYDI), which was built as a collective effort of 29 institutes from 18 European countries. She was in the core group of coordinating establishment of database structure, data harmonization and description. She was the lead scientist in deriving soil hydraulic predictions for regional and continental scale applications in Europe. In collaboration with Melanie Weynants from Joint Research Centre (JRC) the prediction functions has been implemented in a package, called ‘euptf’, in the open source R software, which enables the wider access and easier implementation of the prediction methods. With the collaboration of ISSAC CAR HAS, UP, ISRIC-World Soil Information and JRC she supervised the preparation of 3D soil hydraulic maps of Europe at 250 m resolution (EU-SoilHydroGrids). The freely accessible database provides soil hydrological information up to 2 m depth with full continental coverage, which enables hydrological, ecological, atmospherical, agricultural or other environmental modelling at continental and regional scales.

THREE KEY PUBLICATION REFERENCES:

Tóth, B., Weynants, M., Pásztor, L., Hengl, T. 2017. 3D Soil Hydraulic Database of Europe at 250 m resolution. Hydrological Processes. doi: 10.1002/hyp.11203.

Tóth, B., Weynants, M., Nemes, A., Makó, A., Bilas, G. and Tóth, G. 2015. New generation of hydraulic pedotransfer functions for Europe. European Journal of Soil Science. 66: 226–238.

Tóth, B., Makó, A., Guadagnini, A., Tóth, G. 2012. Water retention of salt affected soils: quantitative estimation using soil survey information. Arid Land Research and Management, 26. 103-121.