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“What were they thinking?” It’s a common question asked by agricultural scientists about the design of long-term cropping system experiments. Starting a long-term study is a big investment and having asked those questions ourselves while working with multi-decadal trials, you can imagine how daunting it was to be tasked with setting up a Long-term Agroecological Research and Extension (LTARE) site through the Washington Soil Health Initiative (WaSHI).
Ever wonder who manages the soil sampling data from the State of the Soils Assessment? Or who writes the code that produces our Soil Health Reports?
We tend not to want to think too hard about the contents of our toilets, much less where they go after we flush. While our waste may be out of sight and out of mind after this point for the average person, in reality, the problem of what to do with our waste isn’t as “flushable” on a larger scale.
Here we explain why we are including soil biology in this study, how we are measuring microbial biomass, and what we expect to learn.
Tillage is essential for termination of overwintering foliage (e.g., multifunction crops, weeds) and seedbed preparation, but can degrade biological and physical soil function, or health
With recent funding acquired from WSU’s BIOAg Grant Program, we initiated an experiment this spring to evaluate the impact that tillage has on soil health metrics, weed populations, and crop growth.
Here is an infographic entitled “Nematodes: Friend or Foe?”
Our group set out to identify a set of soil health indicators that are useful to track in Central Washington orchards. Specifically, we were challenged to track which factors may be limiting to yield and fruit
Soil health has become a popular topic in agricultural and environmental sectors over the last decade, and soil scientists around the world have rejoiced that others are recognizing the importance of soils to the systems on which our societies rely.
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