Key details
Professor Jack Hannam
Head of Department, Agriculture, Health & Environment, Natural Resources Institute
Professor Jacqueline (Jack) Hannam joined NRI in 2025 as Head of the Agriculture, Health and Environment Department. She is an internationally recognised soil scientist, focusing on soil data and soil health, regenerative agriculture, land use change, and soil policy. Before joining NRI she was at Cranfield University leading the Land Information team.
Her research has developed operational national soil health indicators, placed-based regenerative farming methods restoring soil health, and how policies and climate factors influence adoption and outcomes. She considers soil as a complex system, using AI, sensors, and satellite data to monitor changes and improve decision-making by combining scientific and local knowledge.
She is involved in large consortium UKRI and IUK research projects (LUNZ Hub, JUSTLANZ, and Nitrogen Climate Smart) contributing to land-use transformation, net-zero and climate smart agriculture, and sustainable farming systems.
Jack plays a key role in policy and science leadership, as former President of the British Society of Soil Science and member of the Science Advisory Committee at Natural England. She is active in public engagement and transdisciplinary collaboration.
A full staff profile can be seen on the Natural Resources Institute website.
Research / Scholarly interests
Soil Health and Regenerative Agriculture
- Which regenerative farming methods work best in different places?
- How to scale-up these methods and track their impact on soil health across farms and landscapes?
- Can practicing multiple regenerative practices improve soil health or cause trade-offs with other environmental and social services?
- How do policies, climate change, and environmental markets (like carbon credits) influence farmers’ decisions to adopt regenerative practices?
Understanding Soil as a System
- Soil is a complex and dynamic system that’s hard to monitor and manage because it changes over time and space.
- How can tools like sensors and satellites help us understand what soil is doing and how it is changing—like storing carbon, supporting crops, or filtering water.
- Using this data, how can AI and machine learning detect how soil reacts to changes in farming or climate?
- Combining different types of knowledge (scientific, local, traditional) can find better ways to measure soil health and shape smarter environmental policies.
Recent publications
Article
Winowiecki, Leigh , Bargués-Tobella, Aida, Chevallier, Romy, Linden, Hanna , Trautman, Sabrina , Ademonla, Djalal Arinloye , Bayala, Jules , Chacha, Robin , Hannam, Jacqueline , Kimaro, Anthony (2026), Measuring what matters: soil health as the missing metric in climate-smart agriculture monitoring. Frontiers Media. In: , , , . Frontiers Media, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 10: 1814366 2571-581X (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2026.1814366).
Schillaci, Calogero , Alves, Grace B., Bayad, Mohamed, Bondi, Giulia , Burn, Christopher R. , Breure, Timo , Certini, Giacomo , Chen, Songchao , D'Amico, Michele E. , Dridi, Imene (2026), Soil profiles: a window into soil genesis and degradation. Wiley. In: , , , . Wiley, European Journal of Soil Science (EJSS), 77: e70322 (3) ISSN: 1351-0754 (Print), 1365-2389 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ejss.70322).
Uchida, Yoshitaka , Krzic, Maja, Hannam, Jacqueline, Brevik, Eric , Field, Damien , Vancampenhout, Karen , Zhu, Fen , Reuter, Ron , Utami, Sri R. , Mukumbuta, Ikabongo (2026), The future of soil science education at the university level to meet societal demands at the global level. Wiley. In: , , , . Wiley, Natural Sciences Education, 55: e70052 (1) . pp. 1-16 2168-8281 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/nse2.70052).
Jones, Philip , Hannam, Jacqueline, Collins, Chris (2025), Evaluating the economic co-benefits of soil carbon sequestration: the test case of the UK. Elsevier. In: , , , . Elsevier, Land Use Policy, 161: 107839 ISSN: 0264-8377 (Print), 1873-5754 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2025.107839) NB Item availability restricted.
Gold, Harriet M. , Hannam, Jacqueline A., Potts, Simon G., Brittain, Claire , Galic, Nika , Johnston, Alice S.A. (2025), Evaluating biological realism in ecological modelling: application of a novel framework to compare mechanistic and process-based earthworm and wild pollinator population models. Elsevier. In: , , , . Elsevier, Ecological Modelling, 512: 111399 ISSN: 0304-3800 (Print), 1872-7026 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2025.111399).
Li, Zhaoxing , Girkin, Nick T., Hannam, Jacqueline A., Johnston, Alice S.A. (2025), Soil fauna community body size structure mediates litter loss responses to temperature and plant litter treatments in ecological microcosms. Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (SGN). In: , , , . Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (SGN), Soil Organisms, 97 (3) . pp. 291-304 ISSN: 1864-6417 (Print), 2509-9523 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2025.111399).