Senani Karunaratne

Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO Agriculture & Food

Senani Karunaratne is a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO Agriculture and Food. His research focuses on measuring, modelling, and predicting variation in environmentally important properties and functions across spatial and temporal scales, with a strong emphasis on soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics and greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting. His work advances understanding of how land management practices and climate change influence SOC stocks, composition, and fluxes.

By integrating field measurements with empirical, process-based, and surrogate modelling approaches, Senani explores the complex interactions among soil, climate, and agricultural systems. He leads several nationally coordinated projects on SOC, contributing to the development of robust monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) frameworks and GHG modelling and accounting systems.

His research plays a key role in informing Australia’s national soil and climate policies. Senani currently leads the Carbon Accounting and Function Team within the CSIRO Agriculture and Food research unit.