Speaker: Dr. Yushu Xia
Improving agricultural management has emerged as a promising natural climate solution because of its potential to improve soil health, enhance carbon sequestration, promote ecosystem productivity, and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, monitoring the impact of management practices on soil health and agroecosystem outcomes remains challenging due to the substantial heterogeneity in soils.
This talk will elaborate on leveraging multi-source datasets, which include in-situ direct observations, survey and literature data, and remote sensing images, to monitor soil health and agroecosystem outcomes. At the field level, data-driven, targeted field monitoring design that is coupled with a high performance computing (HPC) platform-based modeling approach to generate high spatial resolution estimates needed to support site-specific management decisions will be presented. At a broader scale, the use of data fusion and modeling methods for improving soil carbon and GHG quantification in order to guide policy development and large-scale investments in conservation practices will be discussed.
Finally, this talk will address research needs to bridge ecosystem service monitoring with soil health assessment. It will demonstrate how data-informed monitoring of soil health and agroecosystem outcomes can benefit various groups of stakeholders and help them adapt to a changing climate.