The world was in massive celebration on December 5, 2017. If you were wondering what all of that was about, it was because it was World Soil Day. Soils are great and we tend to under appreciate what they do to sustain life on planet earth. Members of our research group at the Sydney Institute of Agriculture within The University of Sydney put together a SOILinar to tell the world that soils do matter. Our SOILinar highlights some of the research we do, and is presented as a number of shortish clips by various members of our research group. Be prepared to learn something new and enjoy.
The SOILinar
The SOILinar is put together as a YouTube playlist. Each clip is a different story with different presenters.
- Alex McBratney providing a welcome and general overview of the contents of the SOILinar
- Vanessa Pino on soil biodiversity. What is it, How we measure it, and and how we map it.
- Damien Field and Darren Kidd on the soil security concept and how we might quantify it. Case study in Tasmania, Australia.
- Jose Padarian on global soil mapping efforts using the Google Earth Engine
- Philip Hughes and Jingyi Huang on efforts to unify soil classification systems and determine where they overlap and where they do not.
- Budiman Minansy, Stacey Paterson and yours truly on digital soil mapping and digital soil assessment
- Derek Yates on soil education.
- Mario Fajardo Pedraza on the developments of phone apps to facilitate efficient soil measurement. Example app is one about measurement of soil aggregate stability.
- Alex McBratney again. Here wrapping things up.
If you are interested in soil, agriculture or wanting to learn more about any of these two things and more, you should look up the Sydney Institute of Agriculture and read more about what we do at Sydney.
Hope you had a pleasant World Soil Day, and we hope we have made you think about soils more and about how important they are.