Tag Archives: state of the science

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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16Mar/22

Long-term Effect of Cover Crops on Soil Health and Crop Yield

As part of the Soil Health Nexus Digital Cafe Series, Dr. Inderjot Chahal with the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Guelph, presents “Long-term Effect of Cover Crops on Soil Health and Crop Yield”. This presentation was originally broadcast on Wednesday, March 16, 2022.

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21Jan/22

Quantifying Soil Health: Where are we now?

As part of the Soil Health Nexus Digital Cafe Series, Dr. Jordon Wade, who is an Assistant Professor of Soil Health at the University of Missouri and the Director of the Soil Health Assessment Center presents “Quantifying Soil Health: Where are we now?”. This presentation was originally broadcast on January 19, 2022.

Reliably measuring soil health is essential for determining appropriate management strategies. Current frameworks for interpreting soil health indicators can be difficult to operationalize. How can we use soil health indicators to inform on-farm management? This talk is a check-in on our current frameworks and how reliable they are (or aren’t) in making management decisions.

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20Dec/21

Soil Stability Maps to Improve Management for Soil Health and Carbon Markets

As part of the Soil Health Nexus Digital Cafe Series, Dr. Bruno Basso from the Michican State University present “Soil Stability Maps to Improve Management for Soil Health and Carbon Markets”. This presentation was originally broadcast on December 15, 2021.

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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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21Jul/21

Solar Corridors for Soil Health

As part of the Soil Health Nexus Digital Cafe Series, Joel Gruver of Western Illinois University presents “Solar Corridors for Soil Health”. This presentation was originally broadcast on July 21, 2021.

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