Sensors Detect Changes In Soil

Sensors Detect Changes In Soil The Earth Rover Program applies the principles of seismology to better understand soil and subsoil conditions. It sends a sound wave into the soil, records it, and converts vibration data into detailed 3D images of soil structure and related factors. These images are integrated with resistivity measurements and ground-penetrating radar to reveal and measure key properties such as density, moisture and porosity, as well as variations in soil composition, compaction and root systems, all without disturbing the ground. “We’ve shown that we can measure soil bulk density and the depth of peat effectively,” says Simon Jeffery of the Earth Rover Program. “Our plan is to help farmers identify where they have subsoil compaction and how deep it is, as well as whether the soil is sufficiently dry that remediation by subsoiling is likely to be effective rather than making it worse.” Jeffery, a soil ecologist at Harper Adams University in the U.K., is the soil lead for the Earth Rover Program, a nonprofit dedicated to improving farmers’ understanding of their soils. The effort is multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, and international in both its team and scope. Another founder is Tarje Nissen-Meyer, a professor of geophysics at the University of Exeter, also in the U.K. He previously used seismology to study elephant behavior in Kenya. His research team discovered that they could identify an animal species walking through the savanna by its signature footfall. Adapting that ability to soils has required developing new technologies in terms of sensors and other components, as well as adapting existing technologies from other fields, such as music. Gathered data will be analyzed using AI tools such as SoilGPT. AI and machine learning will integrate diverse datasets to make soil insights searchable, interpretable and useful. All work is conducted in an Open Access environment, allowing others to contribute to the effort. Source code, blueprints and designs are publicly available. “Currently, all our components are built in-house and aren’t commercially available,” says Jeffery. “Our plan is to have different offers available, cheap components a farmer can buy and deploy, as well as an app that would allow a farmer to place their mobile phone on the soil and let it sense the vibrations.” The ultimate goal is to develop a free app that identifies soil conditions and provides suggestions for improving soil. They’re well on their way, with research hubs and survey sites in the U.K., Kenya and Colombia.  “We’ve shown that it’s possible to measure water flow and retention through soils in research led by colleagues at the University of Washington,” says Jeffery. “This approach has the potential to make precision irrigation at the farm scale possible, maximizing the efficiency of water use.” In “Between Two Furrows,” a published research paper, the Earth Rover Program team demonstrates that they can detect changes in soil structure caused by differences in soil management. “The next step is to run intervention plots to investigate which improvements we can and cannot detect and whether we can develop this to be able to give farmers advice beyond just identifying subsoil compaction,” says Jeffery. “Can we identify soil that would benefit the most from organic amendments, or whether a soil is likely to be able to transition to no-till without large yield penalties, for example? Work on these elements is still ongoing and likely still several years away from being available to farmers, but watch this space.” Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Earth Rover Program, info@earthroverprogram.org; www.earthroverprogram.org).

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