Josh Heitman

Bio

https://heitman.wordpress.ncsu.edu/
https://casm.cals.ncsu.edu

Soil is the interface between biological, atmospheric, and geologic systems. Movement of heat, water, and chemical in soil impacts the terrestrial environment at nearly every scale. Research efforts focus on understanding principles of this movement through laboratory and field experiments, development of new measurement techniques, and numerical modeling.
Major research goals are to detail soil water and energy budgets for evaporation and evapotranspiration, improve efficiency and services of agricultural, urban, and marginal soils, and develop theoretical frameworks and measurement systems to quantify soil processes.

Extension Publications

Publications

• A bimodal model for thermal conductivity as a function of matric potential incorporating adsorption and capillarity , Geoderma (2026)
• Biocrusts regulate the phase transition between liquid water and ice within seasonally frozen soils in drylands , Journal of Hydrology (2026)
• Rethinking Soils in Land Surface Models , Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (2026)
• Adjusting seeding rate across soybean planting date and maturity in the Southeast United States , Crop Science (2025)
• Biocrusts regulate surface soil deformations during freezing-thawing and wetting-drying cycles in cold-winter drylands , Cold Regions Science and Technology (2025)
• Biocrusts-induced changes of surface soil rheological properties and their connections to biofilaments and extracellular polymeric substances in abandoned farmlands , Soil and Tillage Research (2025)
• Divergent effects of biocrusts on winter unfrozen water dynamics within aeolian sand and loess soil and their ecohydrological implications , CATENA (2025)
• Emerging issues and research opportunities in vadose zone processes , Vadose Zone Journal (2025)
• Enriched stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in biocrusts unveil their critical roles in mediating ecohydrological processes of drylands , Plant and Soil (2025)
• Fraise mowing and hollow‐tine aerification impact bermudagrass surfaces , Crop Forage & Turfgrass Management (2025)