Tag Archives: soil

19Jul/23

State of the Soils: A soil health assessment across Washington’s diverse soils and systems

This edition of the Soil Health Nexus Digital Café series featured Dr. Deirdre Griffin LaHue, Assistant Professor of Soil Health and Sustainable Soil Management at Washington State University. Dr. LaHue discusses the Washington State of the Soils Assessment Project and the Washington Soil Health Initiative, preliminary findings, challenges, and next steps. This presentation was originally broadcast on Wednesday, July 19, 2023.

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21Jun/23

Grazing, Cover Crops, and Soil Health

This Digital Cafe features Augustine Obour, Associate Professor of Soil Science at Kansas State University, who discusses Kansas State University’s research efforts using cover crops as forage to provide immediate economic benefits to farmers and quantifying the impacts of utilizing cover crops for forage on soil health and crop yields in semiarid dryland systems. This presentation was originally broadcast on Wednesday, June 21, 2023.

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28Apr/23

New Whitepaper Explores the Connection between Soil Health and Water Quality

The Soil Health Nexus is excited to debut two new resources on the Soil Health Toolbox! Two Soil Health Nexus members, Francisco Arriaga, Associate Professor and Extension Specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Anna Cates, Assistant Professor and State Soil Health Specialist at the University of Minnesota, recently published a long-awaited whitepaper exploring the connection between soil health and water quality.

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15Mar/23

Lessons learned from on-farm cover crop research in Nebraska

In this Digital Cafe, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Assistant Professor Andrea Basche and PhD graduate student Fernanda Krupek share results from five-year on-farm experiments conducted through a partnership program with Nebraska NRCS and the Nebraska On-Farm Research Network. This includes findings on how cover crops impact soil properties, nutrient cycling, weed communities and best practices for sampling at the farm scale. This presentation was originally broadcast on Wednesday, March 15, 2023.

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15Feb/23

Baseline Assessment of the Soil Health in Ohio

A key part of soil health assessments is understanding how soil health indicators vary by soil type. This Digital Café features Christine Sprunger, Assistant Professor of Soil Health at Michigan State University, who outlines a baseline soil health assessment that was conducted in Ohio. The talk also outlines goals for conducting future baseline assessments across the state of Michigan. This presentation was originally broadcast on Wednesday, February 15, 2023.

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18Jan/23

Prairies and Landscape Change: Notes from the Underground

Restoring prairie from cropland has well-known benefits to soil health – at least to the soil directly underneath the prairie. In this presentation, Dr. Marshall McDaniel, Associate Professor at Iowa State University, shared how might prairie strips, or contour plantings of native prairie species embedded in row crop fields, affect the surrounding soil and crops. This presentation was originally broadcast on Wednesday, January 18, 2023.

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21Sep/22

Soil Health Practices and Water Behavior and Efforts to Quantify Soil Function

Soil health is defined in terms of soil function, and some of the most important functions are related to water-holding and water infiltration. Farmers and policy-makers both care about these properties, but they can be elusive to measure. In this edition of the Soil Health Digital Café, Dr. Anna Cates, University of Minnesota Soil Health Specialist, discusses on-farm efforts to quantify changes in soil function with soil health practice adoption, including soil organic matter pools, soil aggregates, and water infiltration. This presentation was originally broadcast on Wednesday, September 21, 2022.

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17Aug/22

How to Interrogate a Soil

This Soil Health Digital Café features Tony Hartshorn, Associate Professor at Montana State University, who discusses his work in the Soil Interrogation Lab at Montana State University, soil literacy, soil remediation, and the importance of knowing your parent material. This presentation was originally broadcast on Wednesday, August 17, 2022.

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22Nov/21

Can We Quantify Soil Biological Activity Without a Lab?

As part of the Soil Health Nexus Digital Cafe Series, Dr. Amy Schmidt and Karla Melgar from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln present “Can We Quantify Soil Biological Activity Without a Lab?”. This presentation was originally broadcast on November 17, 2021.

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20Oct/21

Soil Carbon Storage in Agricultural Fields

As part of the Soil Health Nexus Digital Cafe Series, Alexandra (Sasha) Kravchenko, Professor in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences at Michigan State University presents ” Soil Carbon Storage in Agricultural Fields”. This presentation was originally broadcast on October 20, 2021.

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