Exploring a Dynamic Soil Information System Proceedings of a Workshop (2021) / Chapter Skim
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3 The Need for a Dynamic Soil Information System
3 The Need for a Dynamic Soil Information System
Pages 21-30
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From page 21... ...
, John Mesko from the National Corn Growers Association, and Stephen Wood from The Nature Conservancy. Each panelist offered a short statement and then the panel discussed the issue, taking questions from the moderator, each other, and audience members.
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From page 22... ...
SMARTFARM aims to develop highly scalable soil measurement systems that can be used to inform market incentives for improved carbon management, with an emphasis on nitrous oxide as the primary driver of net positive emissions and soil carbon as the potential driver of net negative emissions. The research team has received phase 1 funding to capture high resolution soil data and make the data available to the public.
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From page 23... ...
The potential first stop is the scientific data services of USDA's National Agricultural Library, which offers data management policy and planning, repository management, data and metadata curation and consultation, and preservation, and is serviced by the Ag Data Commons. Researchers can submit or link their data to the Ag Data Commons in order to meet the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability data requirements of journals or the public access requirements of funders such as NIFA.
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From page 24... ...
Other NSF programs provide open environmental data as well, Kane said, including the Long-Term Ecological Research network, the Critical Zone Observatories program, and Integrated Digitized Biocollections. "A major interest of NSF going forward," he said, "is enabling the scientific community to make full use of all of this open environmental data to address questions, to identify questions, to really understand the earth and its biota as never before." Of relevance to dynamic soil information systems is a currently open competition to create a Center for Advancement and Synthesis of Open Environmental Data and Sciences.
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From page 25... ...
"Wouldn't it be great," he asked, "if we could get soil information on a 10-meter grid with properties, interpret it for land use, use real-time water and climate information -- soil moisture, water table depth, irrigation needs -- forecast the effects of conservation practices, … and then determine the effective practices for desired land management goals … and if we could have all of that in one place? " One role of NRCS is to provide producers, landowners, and land managers with the information they need to manage their land more effectively, Lindbo said, and to that end, NRCS is developing a dynamic soil survey with five parts.
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From page 26... ...
"Whether they be climate related, water quality related, or urban agriculture related, they're all going to need that soil information so the decisions can be made properly," he said, "and from this workshop we hope to be able to see what's out there, start talking to people, and move us forward to the future." John Mesko National Corn Growers Association The Soil Health Partnership, Mesko said, is a program of the National Corn Growers Association. It operates in 16 states and has more than 200 sites on working farms where it tests and evaluates the effects of various soil health−changing practices on the soils themselves and on the economics of the farm.
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From page 27... ...
"If a farmer has never planted a cover crop before, the first time out it often doesn't go well. It has a lot to do with timing and seed application rate and the technology that they're using, and does it fit into what they're already doing on a year-in, year-out basis." Thus, he said, the Soil Health Partnership would appreciate access to a dynamic soil information database.
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From page 28... ...
"Part of that is because the scale that we're working at is quite broad and it's not a field-by-field type strategy," he said, "and so that has put us in a situation where what we need are systems that allow us to assess the adoption of practices at broad scales and to assess and evaluate how soil might be changing at broad scales over time." In short, he said, The Nature Conservancy could benefit from the type of dynamic soil survey that Lindbo described in an earlier presentation about NRCS. In concluding, Wood said that equally important to better understanding changes in soil properties over time will be converting that knowledge into greater insights about agronomic and environmental outcomes and, in turn, developing more effective strategies for promoting desirable regional, national, and even global outcomes.
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From page 29... ...
"But the critical part," he added, "is that [since] methodologies change over time, we have to be able to look backwards and make those comparisons as well." Fenny van Egmond from the International Soil Reference and Information Centre added via Slack that the Food and Agriculture Organization's Global Soil Partnership is developing standards for soil data exchange, working to standardize sampling practices, and building GLOSIS (Global Soil Information System)
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From page 30... ...
Alfred Hartemink asked Stephen Wood to describe the benefits of a dynamic soil information system for The Nature Conservancy. Wood responded that the organization would benefit from the insights gained about soil knowledge and from projections of regional changes in aspects such as water quality, water availability, and greenhouse gas cycling.
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