SAES-422 Multistate Research Activity Accomplishments Report
Sections
Status: Approved
Basic Information
- Project No. and Title: NCERA_old3 : Soil and Landscape Assessment, Function and Interpretation
- Period Covered: 10/01/2015 to 09/30/2017
- Date of Report: 04/05/2018
- Annual Meeting Dates: 07/12/2016 to 07/15/2016
Participants
Mickey Ransom, Kansas State Univ., Brian Slater, Ohio State Univ., Douglas Malo, South Dakota State Univ., Kevin McSweeney, Univ. of Illinois, Lee Burras, Iowa State Univ., David Lindbo, NRCS, Curtis Monger, NRCS, David Hoover, NRCS, Cathy Seybold, NRCS, Henry Ferguson, NRCS
Accomplishments
1. Continued integration of experiment station and university laboratory pedon descriptions and soil property data into NRCS's national database.
2. Updating and improving yield predictions and/or soil productivity indices for major crops in a number of states. These data are critical to management decisions and taxation decisions in some states.
3. Measuring soil dynamic properties and gaining understanding of soil change under a variety of management systems.
4. Development of new technologies for soil mapping (Digital Soil Mapping), soil morphology (Digital Soil Morphometrics), and classification.
5. Extending soil survey to urban and other highly managed or disturbed environments.
6. Evaluating of amendments such as biochar and gypsum as well as waste products and documenting how they affect pedology and land management.
7. Contributions to the assessment of soil quality and soil health.
8. Development of new techniques to measure soil change across multiple scales from new remote sensing technologies for measuring tillage intensity to micromorphological analyses for measuring erosion impacts.
Impacts
- NCERA-3 university cooperators continue to provide a significant role in coordination and planning of ongoing soil survey activities, mostly directed towards improvement and updates of accessible soil survey information in National databases. Updated information includes improvements to information about soil properties and interpretations important for land use and management decisions.
- University, NRCS and other cooperating agencies are working together in a number of states to develop better understanding of specific soil-landscape relationships to improve and update soil surveys. These projects include efforts to characterize benchmark soils and catenas, contributions to research on nutrient loading and development of calibrated P-indices, and Digital Soil Mapping. In a major education-focused project, state wide maps of a variety of soil features such as soil parent materials have been produced for a number of states in the east of the region and integrated into an online and tablet system for field use by students and others.
- Accomplishments in this area have continued to be highly state specific with only a few states reporting direct research that examines scale accuracy and/or precision (e.g., suitability of soil survey data/maps for salinity and drainage risk assessment and management decisions, precision agriculture, and development of Soil Systems maps at broad scale).
- Projects in all states aim to continue to improve the science behind soil assessment and interpretations. Continuing projects include new developments in Digital Soil Mapping, methods for more rapid and accurate soil attribute prediction, effects of land use and management on soil carbon stocks, evaluation of soil moisture sensors for monitoring hydrology and controlling wastewater application within onsite systems, effects of soil amendments on soil health, tillage impacts on soil properties such as soil compaction and on crop yields and product quality.
- NCERA-3 members and universities continue to provide quality educational programs at undergraduate level. Each state reported noteworthy research, exceptional teaching of pedology and related areas including soil judging and meaningful outreach programs. Example successes include many refereed publications (see list below), thousands of student credit hours in soil science extension publication related to pedology. In addition, members provided a wide range of services to new stakeholders and clients locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. One notable example was the hosting of the 2016 National Soil Judging Contest at Kansas State University.
- NCERA-3 members continue to work with a broad range of other disciplines to enhance access to high quality information about the soil resource, and to help the public understand the value of the soil resource and to avail the valuable tools for aiding responsible decisions about natural resource management.