Catriona Macdonald

Associate Professor Catriona Macdonald at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (Western Sydney University) investigates how environmental change affects nutrient cycling and ecosystem functioning. Her work spans natural, agricultural, and managed ecosystems, focusing on microbial-mediated nutrient transformations under climate change stressors like elevated CO₂, temperature shifts, and drought. She employs field studies, lab assays, and molecular techniques to explore carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus dynamics in soils.

Key research areas include

• Nutrient cycling
• Plant-soil interactions
• Climate change impacts
• Heavy metal contamination
• Forensic microbial ecology

Notable awards:

• Best oral presentation, New Zealand Soil Science Society (2006)
• $8,000 NZ travel grant for technique training (2006)
• $2,000 NZ symposium attendance grant (2006)

Current grants involve projects like:

• An integrated disease management program for the Australian Potato Industry (2024-2029, Hort Innovation)
• Mechanistic responses of phosphorus-limited forests to CO₂ enrichment (2022-2025, ARC Discovery)
• Rhizosphere mediation of soil greenhouse gas fluxes with climate change (2022-2024, ARC Discovery)