Rajagopalan, K.

Soil erosion is a continuous agricultural and environmental problem in the inland Pacific Northwest. Factors contributing to the high erosion rates include hilly topography, highly erodible soils, frequent winter freeze-thaw events that weaken the soil, and tillage and fallow practices that leave soil pulverized and bare. This project will develop a prototype framework to measure success (or lack thereof) of conservation programs.

Incentive programs to promote climate mitigation and soil health often resort to incentivizing practice adoption and crudely estimated benefits, rather than the actual soil carbon accrual. A transition to incentivizing the benefit itself, aligned with the principles of true cost accounting, is critical.

State-wide mapping of soil-health indicators and related agricultural practices is key to tracking our progress towards improving sustainability of agriculture. While this information and low-cost platforms to gather this information for large areas are currently lacking, there have been some recent successes such as satelliteimagery based tillage class mapping for the United States Corn Belt. […]