‘We can tell farmers the problems’: experts say seismic waves can check soil health and boost yields | Soil

A groundbreaking soil health measurement technique could help prevent famine and drought, scientists said.

Currently, scientists need to dig large numbers of holes to examine soil, which is time-consuming and damages its structure, reducing the accuracy of sampling.

Soil experts gathered now World Traveler The program used seismology, a technology used to measure the Earth’s crust, understand earthquakes and detect hydrocarbons, to evaluate soil for the first time.

The team’s geophysicists and soil scientists call this technique “soil science” and aims to precisely map the world’s living soils. To do this, they put a piece of metal on the soil, hit it with a hammer and measure the waves. These bounce off hard surfaces such as rocks or compacted soil and pass through the structure of holes made by worms and microorganisms to provide a fine-grained map of what is happening underground.

Waves can also be affected by soil dryness, so they can detect when more water is needed and the extent of microbial life, so farmers know when they need to add more organic matter.

The not-for-profit company, co-founded by Guardian columnist George Monbiot, aims to create a free app where farmers can measure the health of their soil and get advice on how to improve it.

Soil ecologist Prof Simon Jeffery, another co-founder, said: “Soil is one of our most valuable resources. 99% of the calories we consume come from soil, the plants we eat or the animals that eat plants growing in soil. It’s underappreciated because many people don’t know how important it is, but without soil we wouldn’t be here.”

Poor farming practices such as tilling the soil and adding pesticides, as well as extreme weather conditions caused by erosion and climate disruption, have damaged the soil we need to grow food around the world. Global crop yields are expected to decline by 50% in some regions as the population increases.

It is difficult for farmers to find solutions to soil problems due to the lack of fine-grained mapping. Crop yields can vary from meter to meter within the same field due to soil characteristics that often cannot be detected from the surface; This means farmers rely on extensive interventions such as whole-field fertilization and plowing, which harm wildlife and soil health, pollute rivers, and are expensive.

Kenya-based soil scientist Peter Mosongo said this could change the lives of farmers in the region. “We were in a village near Mount Kenya and a farmer there told us that he had never taken soil samples on the farm. They know they need to do this testing, but the laboratories that can do it are too far apart and the poorest farmers don’t have the means to get there. Our technology can find areas of subsoil compaction, which can reduce the risk of flooding and increase crop yields.”

“If we address soil fertility, we can also address the food crisis. We can tell farmers about the problems in their soil, and then they can increase their yields by making interventions, such as adding more organic matter.”

Using seismic wave technology means Mosongo and Jeffrey won’t have to dig as many holes in their daily lives. “Peter and I have dug a lot of holes in our time,” Jeffrey said.

Jeffrey said the soil had not been adequately explored. The UK, a small and well-studied island, has the best soil map in the world, but even this is a 5km x 5km grid of accuracy and this is not fine-tuned enough to know all the different soil types and differences in fertility and compaction within a field.

Jeffrey said: “Where I am at Harper Adams [an agricultural university in Shropshire]”The soil map says there are only three types of soil and no peat, but we actually found 18 types with this technique and a fair amount of peat.”

Mosongo said the situation was worse in countries in Africa where the soil map was “based on a few samples”, meaning farmers were unable to solve fertility problems.

“We have problems when the rainy seasons come, the water cannot penetrate the substrate, so we experience a lot of flooding. The plants cannot survive because the roots cannot penetrate.”

Monsongo said it is important to protect soils from erosion and degradation. “In the UK, 1cm of soil can take around 500 years to develop. This is washed away in an afternoon. It washes away as sediment into rivers and into the ocean; we can’t get it back. If we run out of soil, we run out of food.”

This method can also be used to measure the amount of carbon in soil, as currently most of these calculations are based on guesswork.

Most importantly, they hope their technology can help farmers continue feeding the world. “Our population growth is increasing and we are not increasing agricultural productivity, it is falling. If we do not do something, we face hunger,” Mosongo said.

Soil ecologist Aidan Keith from the UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology, who was not involved in the project, said: “Soil is a relatively complex environment when it comes to listening to and tuning wave signals. “The development of advanced yet affordable sensor technology and robust data analysis to predict a range of important soil physical properties using seismic waves could be transformative.

“It has great potential as a method with limited disturbance and direct delivery, but of course we need a solid understanding of current limits and ultimate limits. Interdisciplinary collaboration is key to giving greater meaning to observed data.”