Lithma Kariyawasam
Masters Student
Lithma Kariyawasam was born and raised in Sri Lanka, where she earned her B.S. in Agriculture from the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. After graduation, she gained valuable academic experience working as a teaching assistant at the same university for a year. In 2022, she embarked on an important journey to Nebraska to the Panhandle Research, Extension, and Education Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) in Scottsbluff as a research scholar under the mentorship of Dr. Maharjan. This opportunity marked a significant milestone in her academic career.
Lithma is currently pursuing an M.S. degree in Agronomy with a specialization in Soil and Water Sciences in the Department of Agronomy at UNL, also under the guidance of Dr. Maharjan. Her research focuses on developing innovative strategies for managing soil health in croplands. The primary objective of her major project is to identify critical soil health indicators to assess the soil health gap in croplands.
Her research interests include novel approaches to soil health assessment, establishing soil health benchmarks, improving soil health management for farmers, promoting soil conservation, and advancing environmental sustainability.
Publications
Kariyawasam Hetti Gamage, L.R., Gnanavelrajah, N., Ketheesan, B. and Kajeevan, K., 2023. Chlorella sp. Cultivation Using Parboiled Rice Effluent and Utilization of the Microalgae as Coorganic Fertilizer for Brinjal (Solanum melongina). Waste and Biomass Valorization, 14(12), pp.4243-4256. DOI: 10.1007/s12649-023-02134-3
Das, S., Hird, A., Maharjan, B., Stephenson, M. and Kariyawasam, L., 2024. Reference site selection based on state-and-transition models for soil health gap evaluation within cropland reference ecological units. Soil Security, 16, p.100142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soisec.2024.100142
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