Dr. Sharpley is been awarded the ASA’s Environmental Quality Award (1994) and the SSSA’s Applied Soil Science Research Award (1998) and Soil Science Research Award (2003).
Dr. Sharpley’s research has greatly increased the basic understanding of the behavior and fate of P and N in agricultural systems and their impact on soil and water resources and has provided management options that are both economically practical and environmentally sound. He has developed a method to estimate P transported in runoff that is widely used in field research, assessment, and selection of agricultural management to reduce eutrophication potential in the USA, Europe, and Australia. This work has led to the development of an indexing system to identify soils, landscapes, and management systems vulnerable to P loss in runoff.