President’s pick: SSSA research March 2026

Exciting new research is shared every day among the scientific community in our journals.  SSSA is the sole publisher of the Soil Science Society of America Journal and Vadose Zone Journal and co-publisher of the Journal of Environmental Quality and Agricultural & Environmental Letters with CSSA and ASA.

Each month, I will pick one or two articles among our journals that represent some of the most exciting, creative, and innovative research in our field of soil science. This month, I have chosen the following article from Soil Science Society of America Journal. Congratulations to the authors and thank you for sharing your excellent work!

Comparison of laboratory- and field-determined soil water retention curves in a well-aggregated tallgrass prairie soil

The authors challenge the intuitive assumption that in-situ measurements necessarily yield more realistic soil water retention curves than laboratory methods. Their findings reveal that commonly deployed field sensors may fail to capture the wet end of the curve accurately due to measurement frequency limitations and sensor equilibration lags … precisely where strong soil aggregation drives nonequilibrium flow dynamics that field measurements are often deployed to capture. This study serves as a valuable reminder that methodology and sensor setup can profoundly shape our interpretations and that bridging laboratory and field observations requires careful attention to instrumentation constraints.

Authors:  Nishadini Widanagamage, Andres Patrignani

Journal:  Soil Science Society of America Journal

Article link:  https://doi.org/10.1002/saj2.70174