Interest in soil health continues to increase as farmers are often experiencing extreme weather conditions and are looking for ways to stabilize or even increase yields. To address this interest, a new continental-wide project called “Probing Our Country’s Soil Health” has launched.
Goals of this new project center around improving a recently developed tool called Soil Health Assessment Protocol and Evaluation (or SHAPE).
SHAPE is an online tool designed to interpret soil health measurements, monitor soil health change, and offer management practice alternatives for improving soil health. An initiative has been funded by the USDA- Natural Resources Conservation Service to work with landowners to provide a more representative dataset to support SHAPE. To do so, diverse management practices and variable soils from across the U.S. are needed.
The project team is looking across the U.S. for landowner participants to contribute to a dataset of over 13,000 soil samples. Participants will be asked to share general information through an online survey for how fields have been managed the last 10 years. This information will be obtained through a facilitator-led online Zoom Meeting that takes about 45 to 60 minutes. Participants will also need to grant access to fields for hand-probe soil sampling, typically 2 or 3 sampling sites from each field. Sampling will typically occur within 6-9 months of the survey.
In Oklahoma, about 160 agricultural fields will be selected, on a first-come basis.
Participating landowners will receive:
• A personalized soil health report of their field(s).
• An appreciation gift card ($170)
• A copy of a book called “Probing Our Country’s Soil Health”. This will be a hard-copy photo book illustrating soil health across the country and the outcomes to this project.
To enroll as a landowner participant, select a time from this schedule link: https://scheduler.zoom.us/kaitlin-flick/oklahoma-shape-land-mngt-survey
Want to know more about the project, CLICK HERE to see the flyer.
