ISMC News 20 December 2022
Announcements + Featured Paper
Announcements
Awards for ISMC members in 2023
Congratulations on your achievement and contribution to soil science, hydrology, and soil modeling.
Hans-Jörg Vogel at the Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung - UFZ Halle-Leipzig was awarded the Kirkham medal as well as the Ramann medal from the German Soil Science Society.
Umakant Mishra of the Sandia National Laboratories is the recipient of the 2022 IUSS Jeju Award for his outstanding accomplishments as an early-career soil scientist.
Salini Sasidharan, at Oregon State University received the 2022 Early Career Award from Soil Science Society of America Soil Physics and Hydrology Division to recognize early-career scientists, who have made an outstanding contribution to Soil Physics and Hydrology.
Teamrat Ghezzehei, at University of California, Merced was selected to be a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America.
Harry Vereecken at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Institute Agrosphere has been awarded the Alfred Wegener Medal and Honorary Membership of the EGU!
ISMC welcomes new members in 2023
Qudus Uthman from University of Florida, US
Jörg Kaduk from University of Leicester, UK
Diamantopoulos, Efstathios from University of Bayreuth, Germany
Mouiz Yessoufou from University of Parakou in Benin
On our own account
The newsletter team and ISMC wish you a pleasant holiday and all the best for the next year. ISMC wants to thank those people responsible for the newsletter: Sagar Gautam, Salini Sasidharan, Yijian Zeng, Martine van der Ploeg, and Teamrat Ghezzehei.
ISMC HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR 2022
Checkout our Featured Soil Modelers in our Instragram Page
Twenty-five international students (out of more than one hundred applicants) attended the 1st ISMC summer school in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) from August 21st to August 26th.
Conferences and Workshops
ISMC related session at EGU April 23–28 2023 in Vienna. Call for abstracts
“Soil Hydrology in Earth System Models and its Parameterisation” (HS8.3.6) has been submitted on behalf of the ISMC working group Pedotransfer Functions. Conveners are Tobias Weber, Sara Bonetti, Surya Gupta, Lutz Weihermüller, and Toby Marthews. More information can be found here
“Parameter Inference, Uncertainty Quantification, Error Modelling and Model Choice in (Sub)surface Hydrology” (HS8.1.7) . Conveners are Wöhling, Guthke, Nowak, and Weber. More information can be found here.
“Recent advances in soil mechanistic modelling of biogeochemical and physical processes across scales” (SSS10.3) . Conveners are Xavier Portell, Siul Ruiz, Minsu Kim, Magdalena Landl, and Samuel Bickel. More information can be found here.
BONARES Conference 2023: Soil as a Sustainable Resource (15-17 May 2023, Berlin, Germany)
A sustainable bioeconomy requires integration of soil productivity with a wide range of other soil functions including nutrient cycling, carbon storage, water retention and filtering as well as being the habitat of a myriad of organisms and enabling their activities. The conference will bring together researchers from various disciplines related to soil and plant sciences and agronomy to discuss strategies towards a (multi)functionality of soil ecosystems taking also constraints of climate and global change into account. The conference aims at providing solutions for a sustainable soil management including climate change adaptation, which requires an understanding of soils at a systemic level and to assess their value in a socio-economic framework.
BONARES is looking forward to welcome interested scientists as well as stakeholders in the field of soil management for inspiring discussions.
The following topics will be presented at the conference:
- Impact of agriculture and cropping systems on soil functions
- Carbon and nutrient cycling in soils: Processes and interactions in a changing world
- Soil biomes and multifunctionality of soils
- Soil degradation and sustainable soil management in agricultural landscapes
- Model-based prediction of the dynamics of soil functions
- Using soil sensing technologies for soil mapping, modelling and decision making in agriculture
- Soils as a key to climate change mitigation: private and public governance instruments to unlock the potential
- Data challenges and solutions
More information can be found at www.bonares2023.de. Abstract submission deadline is January 10th, 2023
Galileo Conference in Naples, Italy
The 8th Galileo Conference "A European vision for hydrological observations and experimentation" will take place on 12th-15th June 2023 in Naples (Italy), with the geosciences excursion at the Alento Observatory scheduled on 14th June (https://www.egu-galileo.eu/gc8-hydro/about/general_information.html).
This 8th Galileo Conference holds the following sessions:
- Innovative geophysical sensing methods in hydrological and critical zone research
- Applications of UAS- and satellite-based remote sensing in hydrological monitoring and modeling
- From hydro-geophysical observations to predictions (e.g. data assimilation, AI)
- Using stable isotope tracking to support hydrological process understanding
- Quantifying regional hydrological change impacts
- Big data science in hydrological research
The call-for-abstract will be opening in early December of this year and directions will appear soon on the webpage. Therefore, SAVE THE DATE and start preparing your contributions.
Featured Paper
Do you want your paper featured?
Please share your recent paper if you want to be featured in the ISMC newsletter. With your contributions, we will select one paper to be featured in every newsletter. Below is the link to google form https://forms.gle/Pfkc7cf5hw2U8cFu5
3–4D soil model as challenge for future soil research: Quantitative soil modeling based on the solid phase
A 3–4D soil model represents a logical step forward from one-dimensional soil columns (1D), two-dimensional soil maps (2D), and three-dimensional soil volumes (3D) toward dynamic soil models (4D), with time as the fourth dimension. The challenge is to develop modeling tools that account for the states of soil properties, including the spatial structure of solids and pores, as well as their dynamics, including soil mass and solute transfers in landscapes. Our envisioned 3–4D soil model approach aims at improving the capability to predict fundamental soil functions (e.g., plant growth, storage, matter fluxes) that provide ecosystem services in the socioeconomic context.
This study provides a structured overview on current soil models, challenges, open questions, and urgent research needs for developing a 3–4D soil model. A 3–4D soil model should provide an inventory of spatially distributed and temporally variable soil properties. As basis for this, we propose a mass balance model for the solid phase, which needs to be supplemented by a model describing its structure. This should eventually provide adequate 3D parameter sets for the numerical modeling of soil functions (e.g., flow and transport). The target resolution is decameters in the horizontal plane and centimeters to decimeters in the vertical direction to represent characteristic soil properties and soil horizons. The actual state of soils and their properties can be estimated from spatial data that represent the soil forming factors, with the use of machine learning tools. Improved modeling of the dynamics of soil bulk density, biological processes, and the pore structure are required to relate the solid mass balance to matter fluxes.
A 3–4D soil model can be built from several types of modeling approaches. We distinguish between (1) process models that simulate mass balances, fluxes and soil structure dynamics, (2) statistical pedometric models using machine learning and geostatistics to estimate the soil inventory within landscapes, and (3) pedotransfer functions to link observable attributes to specific model parameters required to simulate soil functions including water and matter fluxes. This should provide the prerequisites to predict the spatial distribution of soil functions and their changes in response to external forcing.
This endeavor can draw upon many already established models and techniques, yet combining them into a newly created 3–4D soil model is a truly an ambitious, but promising task. The core of such a model is the bookkeeping of the solid mass together with soil structure, while accounting for biogeochemical and mechanical processes. The presented concepts are ambitious in context for research avenues toward the improvement of soil modeling by conjoining methods from a wide range of disciplines, including geological, geophysical, pedological, and remote sensing and visualization applications. The paper reviews and outlines research tools and needs for the 3-D, spatially continuous representation of relevant soil properties and the modeling to represent the dynamics of soil properties and soil functions. More information here or https://doi.org/10.1002/jpln.202200239
