Dr. William E. Emmerich is a soil scientist with the USDA-ARS Southwest Watershed Research Center at Tucson, Arizona.He received a B.S. from the University of California, Riverside in Environmental Science 1975 and Ph.D. in Soil Chemistry 1980. He has had a wide variety of research interests: chemistry of heavy metals in soils from sewage sludge; interaction of water harvesting catchment treatments and soil properties, modeling chemical exchange in overland surface flow; effects of burning, grazing, and drought on surface runoff, erosion, nutrient transport, and sustainability of rangeland ecosystems.
His present research interest are: the use of soil magnetic susceptibility to determine sediment source areas, and carbon and moisture fluxes on rangelands.