Contact Information
Phone: 608-263-5450
Fax: 608-265-2595
Email: pwbarak@wisc.edu
Office: 167A Soil Science
Program Affiliations
Department of Soil Science
Education
B.S. Agriculture, 1976, Faculty of Agriculture (Rehovot), Hebrew University of Jerusalem
M.S. Soil Science, 1982, Faculty of Agriculture (Rehovot), Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ph.D. Soil Science, 1988, Faculty of Agriculture (Rehovot), Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Teaching and Research Overview
I coordinate the introductory soil science course for soils and allied majors, and teach soil chemistry, mineralogy, and element cycling in that course. I teach an undergraduate course, Plant Nutrition Management, and co-teach a graduate course, Mineral Nutrition of Plants, jointly listed with Agronomy, Botany, and Horticulture.
The central focus of my research program is the soil chemistry of plant nutrients. Experimental aspects of the program seek to widen traditional concepts of soil fertility to include rhizosphere fertility, and its possible management, and to emphasize the importance of nutrient interactions. Recent work has taken me from molecular templates for crystallization of phosphate minerals in the lab toward nutrient recovery of nitrogen and phosphorus in wastewater treatment plants. For the past ten years, I have curated the Virtual Museum of Minerals and Molecules, an online resource for the molecular visualization of molecules and minerals of interest to soil and environmental sciences.
Selected Publications
Barak, P., M.E. Tabanpour, M. Avila-Segura, J.M. Meyer. 2007. Struvite Crystallization. US Patent No. 7,182,872.
Barak, P., and E.A. Nater. 2005. The Virtual Museum of Molecules and Minerals: Molecular visualization in a virtual hands-on museum. J. Nat. Res. Life Educ. 34:67-71.
Mafongoya, P.L., P. Barak, and J.D. Reed. 2000. Carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus mineralization of tree leaves and manure. Biol. Fert. Soils 30:298-305.
Grunwald, S., P. Barak, K. McSweeney, and B. Lowery. 2000. Soil landscape models at different scales portrayed in Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). Soil Sci. 165:598-615.
Hernández-Apaolaza, L., P. Barak, and J.J. Lucena. 1997. Chromatographic determination of commercial Fe(III)-chelates of EDTA, EDDHA and EDDHMA. J. Chromatogr. A. 789(1&2):453-460.
Barak, P., C.A. Seybold, and K. McSweeney. 1996. Self-similitude and fractal dimension of sand grains by computer-assisted image analysis. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 60:72-76.
Awards and Honors
2006-07 Wisconsin Teaching Scholar
1999
EduCause Medal |
