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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Exploring a Dynamic Soil Information System: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26170.
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1

Introduction

As a living substrate, soil is critical to the function of Earth’s geophysical and chemical properties. For example, it stores and purifies water and has the potential to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Soil also plays a major role in several human activities, including farming, forestry, and environmental remediation. Optimizing those activities requires a clear understanding of different soils, their functions, their composition and structure, and how they change over time and from place to place. Although the importance of soil to Earth’s biogeochemical cycles and to human activities is recognized, the current systems in place for monitoring soil properties—including physical, chemical, and biological characteristics, along with measures of soil loss through erosion—do not provide an accurate picture of changes in the soil resource over time. Such an understanding can only be developed by collecting comprehensive data about soils and the various factors that influence them in a way that can be updated regularly and made available to researchers and others who wish to understand soils and make decisions based on those data. To that end, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened key stakeholders in a workshop on March 2–4, 2021, to discuss the development of a dynamic soil information system and what such a system might entail (see Appendix A for the full workshop agenda).

The Statement of Task for the workshop noted that a successful dynamic soil information system would include important chemical, physical, and biological information about soil samples that have been collected from a wide range of geographies. It would be essential for the data on the soil samples to be accompanied by data on the various influences on soils, such as land use and land management, soil moisture, and weather. Ideally, the dynamic soil information systems would be useful for a variety of interested parties, from policy makers and land managers to researchers in a wide range of disciplines, such as hydrology, climate science, agriculture, and geology. The workshop was held to examine in greater detail what such a system would look like, what information it might contain, how it would be maintained, and how its information could be made available to interested stakeholders.

Specifically, the stated goal of the workshop was to examine how soil resources nationally might be dynamically and accurately monitored toward the mutually supporting goals

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Exploring a Dynamic Soil Information System: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26170.
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of (1) achieving a better understanding of causal influences on observed changes in soil and interactions of soil cycling of nutrients and gases with earth processes, and (2) providing accessible, useful, and actionable information to land managers and others. To explore the requirements of a dynamic soil monitoring and reporting system, the workshop discussions were organized around several topics, including the following:

  • defining appropriate, measurable indicators of chemical, physical, and biological soil properties;
  • available technologies and methods for timely and cost-effective soil data collection;
  • conceptual and practical considerations for soil data storage and data curation; and
  • tools to deliver information at different scales of resolution to meet the needs of a diversity of land managers, from producers to state and federal scientists and policy makers.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop was held via Zoom. In his opening remarks, Bruno Basso of Michigan State University, the chair of the workshop organizing committee, expanded on the idea of a dynamic soil information system and gave further details on the workshop’s objectives. He explained why a soil information system must be dynamic—in essence, it is because soils themselves are dynamic. Soils are greatly affected by weather, geomorphology, plants and microbes, and human activities (see Figure 1-1).

Weather affects various processes that occur in the soil as well as the plants that are growing in the soil—the dynamics of their roots, the nutrients on which they depend, their decomposition, and other factors are all affected. There is an inherent variability in soils, Basso explained. They vary in the way they were formed, their topography, their texture, how water flows over and through them, and how they weather over time. Furthermore, the plants and microbes associated with soils are highly dynamic in their behavior over both space and time. Much of this dynamism is a reflection of soil management practices; for example, in farmed land, tilling or not tilling the soil, planting or not planting a cover crop, and which agrochemicals are used and how much all affect soil function and properties. The changes in soils can take place on time scales from seconds to centuries, while the spatial variations can take place on scales from micrometers to meters to kilometers. For these

Image
FIGURE 1-1 The dynamic nature of soils.
SOURCE: Basso, slide 5.
Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Exploring a Dynamic Soil Information System: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26170.
×

reasons, it is important to have information about soils that is collected from more than one location and more than one point in time—that is, the information needs to be dynamic.

Basso then posed several main questions that the workshop would seek to address:

  • What should be measured in developing a dynamic soil information system, and how and why?
  • Where, when, and how frequently should the measurements be taken?
  • How accurate do the measurements need to be? When something cannot be measured, what should the proxies be?
  • What cannot be measured well?
  • How should samples and data be stored?
  • How should data from various sources be harmonized?
  • How should stored information be retrieved and delivered?
  • What can be modeled well, and what cannot be modeled well?

Basso also highlighted several topics of uncertainty into which workshop speakers would delve:

  • With regard to sampling, what sampling methods are best (e.g., hand-core, semiautomatic coring, or fully automatic coring)?
  • How many samples should be taken, at what depth, and at what volume?
  • How often should samples be taken, and what should the density of sampling be in order to accurately reflect spatial variability in the soil?
  • Once samples have been collected, how should they be processed?
  • What sorts of measurements should be performed on the samples, whether in the field or in the lab?
  • How should variability in lab results from processing differences be accounted for?

New technologies also offer promise, along with a great deal of uncertainty. Which new technologies can add valuable information about soils to existing databases? For example, what role can remote sensing1 play, such as the use of thermal imaging to estimate soil-water availability? What is the potential of spectroscopy2 and tomography to characterize soil minerals or reveal the effects of soil management practices?

Additional questions central to the workshop target the information that should be combined with the details about the soil itself in order to provide context and inform understanding of soil processes, as well as the information that will be most useful in developing soil models for use in predicting future behavior.

This workshop was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, with additional support from the National Academy of Sciences’ Arthur L. Day Fund and the National Corn Growers Association.

___________________

1 Remote sensing refers to the many technological tools used to understand different aspects of soil properties or land use configurations. The application of a specific sensing tool depends on the scope, scale, and objectives of the research questions. For more information about the application of remote sensing to soils, see Demattê (n.d.).

2 Soil spectroscopy refers to the identification and analysis of the interaction of visible and infrared wavelengths with soil properties. For more information, see Nocita et al. (2015).

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Exploring a Dynamic Soil Information System: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26170.
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Organized according to the workshop agenda, this Proceedings of a Workshop recounts the workshop presentations and discussions (both on Zoom and on the communication platform Slack). Chapter 2 summarizes three keynote presentations that laid the foundation for the rest of the workshop, along with the discussions that followed. Chapter 3 covers the first panel discussion, which focused on the need for a dynamic soil information system. Chapter 4 summarizes the lessons learned from the organizing committee’s listening sessions, held in advance of the workshop, with several organizations that operate different types of soil information systems. Chapter 5 describes the second panel discussion, which focused on identifying existing soil information systems. Chapter 6 summarizes a “fireside chat” among three industry representatives. After the fireside chat, the speakers, panelists, and workshop participants divided into breakout sessions on three separate topics; Chapter 7 presents the results of those discussions. Chapter 8 summarizes the workshop’s concluding session, which featured a synthesis of the workshop outcomes, a presentation on ways for workshop participants to remain involved in the field, and concluding remarks from Basso. Finally, the appendixes present the workshop agenda, organizing committee members’ biographical sketches, speakers’ biographical sketches, and a committee-compiled list of existing soil data repositories.

This Proceedings of a Workshop was prepared by the rapporteurs as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop. The statements recorded here are those of the individual workshop participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all participants, the organizing committee, the sponsors, or the National Academies. Mentions of products or companies are not to be construed as endorsements.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Exploring a Dynamic Soil Information System: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26170.
×
Page 1
Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Exploring a Dynamic Soil Information System: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26170.
×
Page 2
Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Exploring a Dynamic Soil Information System: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26170.
×
Page 3
Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Exploring a Dynamic Soil Information System: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26170.
×
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As a living substrate, soil is critical to the function of Earth's geophysical and chemical properties. Soil also plays a major role in several human activities, including farming, forestry, and environmental remediation. Optimizing those activities requires a clear understanding of different soils, their function, their composition and structure, and how they change over time and from place to place. Although the importance of soil to Earth's biogeochemical cycles and to human activities is recognized, the current systems in place for monitoring soil properties - including physical, chemical, and, biological characteristics - along with measures of soil loss through erosion, do not provide an accurate picture of changes in the soil resource over time. Such an understanding can only be developed by collecting comprehensive data about soils and the various factors that influence them in a way that can be updated regularly and made available to researchers and others who wish to understand soils and make decisions based on those data.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened key stakeholders in a workshop on March 2-4, 2021, to discuss the development of a dynamic soil information system. Workshop discussions explored possiblities to dynamically and accurately monitor soil resources nationally with the mutually supporting goals of (1) achieving a better understanding of causal influences on observed changes in soil and interactions of soil cycling of nutrients and gases with earth processes, and (2) providing accessible, useful, and actionable information to land managers and others. This publication summarizes the presentation and discussion of the workshop.

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