Associate Professor Inakwu Odeh

Summary

I am captivated by techniques that elucidate the past and future simultaneously. My research focus is therefore on modelling of land use and land use change in relation to soil-landscape dynamics, linking this with climate change and variability.

Research interests

Some of the Earth’s systems are changing fast. Because of this the world’s peoples are expressing themselves through the current ambiance of global change under some degree of uncertainty. I am therefore keen to explore and broaden our understanding of the fourth dimension- time, in the scheme of land surface processes. We should apply existing knowledge or develop new or enhanced techniques to "… link land-atmosphere energy and material fluxes..." and "to better understand the feedback loops between the landscape and atmosphere". This is important for monitoring material fluxes at the local and regional scales.

My research portfolio is therefore diversifying from quantitative soil landscape modelling into land use change and its impacts on material fluxes. We need to look at time-dependent landscape processes as influenced by the anthropological factor, and then extending this to the understanding of global changes. My past research has addressed the topics and problems of interest to practitioners of soil mapping and indeed practitioners of land resource assessment, by developing a number of quantitative spatial prediction techniques for mapping the soil-landscape or soilscape. The techniques I have developed are based on quantification of interrelationships of the soil with the land surface configuration to take advantage of rich and emerging new data sources (remote sensing, Gamma Radiometric data, proximal sensing with Electromagnetic Induction, etc). An innovative technique that he been involved in developing, termed as regression-kriging, has been widely cited by other researchers. Additionally I was one of the first to apply the fuzzy sets theory to mapping the soil continuum as a continuous land surface body, and I am continuing the work in both areas.

Background

Odeh is a Sesquicentennial Associate Professor in Rural Spatial Information Systems at the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. He graduated from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria (BSc (Agric) 1st Class (Hon)), from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Nigeria (MSc), and from the University of Adelaide (PhD). Previously Odeh was a Senior Research Fellow and later Research Fellow with the Australian Cotton Cooperative Research Centre.

The impact of Odeh’s work so far is evidenced by reviews in learned journals, by invitations to collaborate with others, by invitations to referee manuscripts submissions to international journals and by invitations to examine postgraduate research theses. He has provided strong leadership in research by leading a major Program of the Australian Cotton CRC, and as the current Sub-program leader of the Australian Cotton Catchment Communities CRC. As an active member of the International Society of Environmental Information Sciences, British Photogrammetric and Remote Sensing Society, British Soil Science Society, Australian Soil Science Society, and International Union of Soil Science, Odeh has organized or was involved in organizing various national and international conferences. He is currently the President of Australian Soil Science Society (Inc.) New South Wales Branch.

Recent publications

• Odeh IOA, Tan D. and Ancev T. 2011. Potential suitability and viability of selected biodiesel crops in Australian marginal lands under current and future climates. BioEnergy Research 4, 165-179.
• Yunusa I.A.M., Manoharan V, Odeh I.O.A., Shrestha S., Skilbeck C.G., Eamus D. 2011. Structural and hydrological alterations of soil due to addition of coal fly ash. Journal of Soils and Sediments 11, 423-431.
• Nelson, M. A., Bishop, T. F. A., Odeh, I. O. A. & Triantafilis, J. 2011. An error budget for deferent sources of error in digital soil mapping. European Journal of Soil Science, 62, 417-430.
• Manandhar R. Odeh I.O.A. and Pontius R.G. 2010. Analysis of twenty years of categorical land transitions in the Lower Hunter of New South Wales, Australia. Agriculture, Ecosystem and Environment 135: 336-346.
• Manandhar R., Odeh I.O.A., Ancev T. 2009. Improving the accuracy of land use and land cover classification of Landsat data using post-classification enhancement. Remote Sensing 1(3):330-344.
• Zhang Y., I.O.A., Han C. 2009. Bi-temporal characterization of land surface temperature in relation to impervious surface area, NDVI and NDBI, using a sub-pixel image analysis. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 11: 256–264.
• Nelson M. A. and Odeh I.O.A. 2009. Digital soil class mapping using legacy soil profile data: A comparison of a genetic algorithm and classification tree approach. Australian Journal of Soil Research 47: 632-649.
• Odeh, I.O.A. and Onus A. 2008. Spatial analysis of soil salinity and sodicity in an irrigated semiarid region of New South Wales, Australia. Environmental Management 42, 265-278.
• Odeh, IOA and Tan D. 2007. Expanding biofuel production in Australia: opportunities beyond the horizon. Farm Policy Journal 4 (2), 29-39.
• Odeh, I.O.A., Crawford, M and McBratney AB. 2007. Digital mapping of soil attributes for regional and catchment modelling, using ancillary covariates, Statistical and Geostatistical Techniques. In: Lagacherie P., A.B. McBratney & M. Voltz (eds.) Digital Soil Mapping. Elsevier, Amsterdam: pp. 437-453.

ResearcherID URL link to Odeh's publications

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