Peter BullockPROF PETER Bullock, who has died aged 70 of liver cancer, was an inspirational soil scientist who became a world-renowned expert on land degradation.
As a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he shared in the award of the 2007 Nobel peace prize: his contribution focused on documenting soil processes in terrestrial ecosystems as well as in describing the impacts of changing climates on land degradation, erosion and desertification - a major issue in many arid and semi-arid parts or the world.
Bullock worked with others to understand how climate change affects the wide range of "ecosystem goods and services" that support life on Earth: production of food, fibre and medicines; soil carbon storage; the processing of wastes; water purification and regulation of flooding and erosion. He showed how soil science provides a central keystone in understanding the full impacts of climate change.
One conclusion reached by the Panel on Climate Change was that desertification is more likely to become irreversible if the environment becomes drier and soils become further degraded through erosion and compaction.
Born in Kinlet, Shropshire, Bullock developed an early interest in the natural environment, studying geography at Birmingham University. On graduation, he joined the fledgling Soil Survey of England and Wales, gaining an MSc in agricultural chemistry at Leeds University.
Awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 1964, he read for his doctorate in agronomy at Cornell University, New York state.
In 1967, he took up the position of head of the mineralogy section of the Soil Survey at Rothamsted Experimental Station in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, where he became an expert in the field of soil micromorphology - the description, interpretation and measurement of soil features and organisation at a microscopic scale.
In co-authoring the seminal Handbook for Soil Thin Section Description (1985), he contributed to a greater understanding of how soils develop over time. Studying soils at this scale provides a foundation for understanding the many critical services and functions that soil performs to sustain our lives, such as
growing our food and cleaning our water.
The terminology that Bullock devised for the discipline is still the most widely used worldwide.
By the time he became director of the Soil Survey of England and Wales in 1986, the organisation was threatened with closure. Bullock's courageous and charismatic leadership was a major factor in its reprieve.
The survey transferred to the Silsoe campus of the then Cranfield Institute of Technology (now Cranfield University), where he was made professor of land resource management.
Bullock wielded increasing influence on governmental and international scientific bodies, demonstrating an early concern with the sustainable environment.
Presidencies of the International Commission on Soil Micromorphology and the council of the British Society of Soil Science were followed by chairs of the important Natural Environmental Research Council review committee, the heads of the EU soils surveys committee and the advisory committee of the European Soil Bureau.
In 1994 he became a special adviser to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in their seminal inquiry into the sustainable use of soil.
On his retirement in 1997, Bullock became emeritus professor of land resource management at Cranfield University, where he was instrumental in the launch of the World Soil Survey Archive and Collection - a unique, global repository of soil survey materials collated from more than 250 territories. His final major contribution lay in developing the Soil-Net educational internet portal, a resource used by schoolteachers and students worldwide.
Bullock was a school governor and worked in several local community-based organisations. A keen cricketer, he was a member of the MCC and a lifetime supporter of Luton Town football club.
He married Patricia in 1963; she and their daughter, Alison, survive him.
After their son Martin's death from cancer, Peter and Patricia organised annual fundraising events for Cancer Research UK.
Peter Bullock: born July 6th, 1937; died April 5th, 2008