Department Staff

Research Staff
Shmuel Assouline, Ph.D.
Alon Ben-Gal, Ph.D.
Nirit Bernstein, Ph.D.
Shabtai Cohen, Ph.D.
Ehud Dayan, Ph.D.
Shmulik Friedman, Ph.D., Head  of  Department
Alex Furman, Ph.D.
Arie Nadler, Ph.D.
David Russo, Ph.D., Director of Institute
Josef Tanny, Ph.D.

Emeriti
Yehezkel Cohen, Ph.D.
Marcel Fuchs, Ph.D.
Amos Hadas, Ph.D.
Avraham Meiri, Ph.D.
Samuel Moreshet, Ph.D.
Gerald Stanhill, Ph.D.


Technicians

Avraham Grava
Asher Laufer
Boris Naphtaliev
Kfir Narkis


Post-Docs and Research Associates
Mariela Faure Mlynski, Ph.D.
Hugo Lemcoff, Ph.D.
Eugene Presnov, Ph.D.

Ph.D Candidate
Kudzo Dorghbetor
Michael Kravchik
Markus Moeller

MSc Candidates
Julia Rol 
Gal Ziv

Activities of the Department

Understanding agricultural crop water use and optimizing crop water use efficiency requires interdisciplinary approaches to analyze and measure the plant's environment, both in the soil and in the atmosphere. Prediction capacity of flow and retention of water and of transport and reaction of solutes in the root and vadose zones, whether for agricultural production or environmental protection, requires understanding in levels from molecular through sample and column up to field and regional scales. The multidisciplinary scientific staff of the department stems from three major scientific disciplines:
Soil Physics: Assouline, Ben-Gal, Friedman, Furman, Hadas, Nadler, Russo
Agricultural Meteorology: S. Cohen, Dayan, Fuchs, Stanhill, Tanny
Plant Physiology: Bernstein, S. Cohen, Y. Cohen, Lemcoff, Meiri, Moreshet
Through in-depth understanding of the soil-water-plant-atmosphere continuum and of processes of movement of water and solutes in soil, and with the aid of state-of-the-art research facilities, the department seeks to develop and disseminate the knowledge needed to wisely manage soil and water resources for sustaining agricultural production and safeguarding environmental quality.
In addition to their research, members of the department give courses in universities and technological institutes and in the short-term international courses organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Basic and applied research endeavors are oriented towards agricultural practices of crop climate control, soil tillage, irrigation, fertilization, pesticide application, and conservation of environmental quality. Major research fields and specific theoretical and experimental studies carried out by the department staff include:

• Climate change in recent decades (in particular “Global Dimming”)
• Climate, climate control and crop and livestock response in agricultural structures
• Screening in orchards
• Screenhouses for vegetable production
• Greenhouses
• Chicken coops
• Boundary layer flows in and above plant canopies
• Natural ventilation of buildings and agricultural structures
• Energy and water balance in agricultural and other wet systems (from organism to crop to ecosystem level)
• Hydraulic architecture and water status of plants and crops
• Measurement of plant and crop water use with plant and boundary layer based methods
• Heat Pulse method for determination of transpiration
• Electrical measurements in tree stems for water and salinity stress monitoring
• Physiology of crop water stress and water stress indexes
• Cellular and physiological approaches for the study of tolerance and sensitivity of plants to salinity
• Numerical analyses of plant growth kinematics at cellular, tissue, organ and whole plant levels
• Tillage and soil structure management
• Water requirement and salt tolerance of crops
• Irrigation practices and technologies
• Irrigation with recycled and marginal water
• Rainfall - infiltration - runoff relationships
• Erosion processes
• Water flow and solute transport in spatially-variable partially-saturated and saturated porous formations
• Spatial variability in hydraulic and mechanical soil properties on the field scale
• Assessment of groundwater contamination hazards
• Hydraulic properties of compacted soils
• Hydrostatics and hydrodynamics of swelling soils
• Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) for simultaneous in-situ determination of soil water content and salinity
• Mapping of soil salinity for precision agriculture purposes
• Use of geophysical methods for monitoring of hydrological properties and processes
• Application of controlled-release formulations of agrochemicals
• Soil-bacteria interactions