ISMC News 27 May 2021
ISMC Presentation Awards
There have been many outstanding presentations throughout the conference. Out of these, following persons receive the Early Career ISMC Presentation Award for their performance at the ISMC Conference:
Katherine Williams for her presentation which was in particular special as it suited a broader audience, was excellently prepared and presented: "Modelling the effects of fertiliser solubility and soil buffer power on phosphorus uptake by spring wheat using an image-based approach".
Hong Zhao for her presentation which was on a particular challenging and well presented topic covering in-situ measurements, with soil modelling and remote sensing: "Retrieving Soil Physical Properties via Assimilating SMAP Brightness Temperature Observations in the Community Land Model".
MariaLaura Bancheri for her presentation which conveyed a particularly challenging work combining statistical models and physical principles for large scale applications: "The extended transfer function model for the simulation of pesticides transport along the unsaturated zone".
Jose Padarian for his presentation which covered many aspects of machine learning and was particularly inspiring: "Deep neural networks: a flexible framework for soil modelling".
Feng Tao for his presentation which covered challenging aspects on deep learning to advance process based modeling of soil organic carbon stock at global scale: "PROcess-guided deep learning and DAta-driven modelling (PRODA) uncovers key mechanisms underlying global soil carbon storage".
Songbai Wu for his presentation which was particularly suited for a broader audience, and covering several interesting aspects on model development for hill slope erosion processes and hydraulic lab experiments: "Modeling soil erosion with evolving rills on hillslopes".
Congratulations to all of you!
ISMC Working Groups News
In the second week of June several WG meetings take place. Further info in the subsection of the WGs Call for Working Groups — ISMC (soil-modeling.org) or via contact persons.
ISMC Thermal WG Meeting
The first ISMC thermal working group meeting takes place on Tuesday 8th . The meeting will likely last 2 hours starting Tuesday, June 8th, 2021, at 4 pm CEST. The preliminary agenda is:
1. Brief (1 min max each) ‘round-table’ introduction by all members about their background and interests
2. Presentation by Anne Verhoef & Yijian Zeng on the background and rationale of this working group, and potential topics for collaboration (10 min)
3. Presentation by Hailong He about the new thermal properties database (15 min including questions)
4. Presentation by Yongjiu Dai/Nan Wei about the “Evaluation of Soil Thermal Conductivity Schemes for Use in Land Surface Modeling” (15 min including questions)
5. More in-depth background provided by various members on a selection of topics*
6. Discussion on ‘low-hanging fruits’ for immediate collaboration
7. Wrap up and follow-on activities (e.g., planning of sessions at conferences, collation of datasets etc.)
* Those who are interested to present their work briefly in 3-4 slides should contact the organisers, ideally by 1 of June, to share slides)
Contact: Anne Verhoef, Yijian Zeng, Nan Wei, Yongjiu Dai, Hailong He, Bhavna Arora
Carbon WG Meeting
The carbon modeling WG has started already and gained traction. The next meeting is on 9th June 6pm CEST. The WG’s goal is to compare machine learning and process based steady state estimates for soil carbon stocks across the globe. These comparisons can be interpreted one of two ways, either as independent estimates for current stocks and thus their disagreement is an opportunity for scientific development or to evaluate uncertainty in our estimates.
Contact: Kathe Todd-Brown, Jan Vanderborght, Roland Baatz, Sagar Gautam, Umakant Mishra, Martine van der Ploeg
ISMC PTF Working Group Kick-off meeting
First ISMC PTF working group meeting will likely last 2 hours starting 10th June, 4pm CEST. The preliminary agenda is:
1) Presentation of the working group members
2) Presentation of the working group objectives
3) Previous results and scientific output (those who are interested to present their work shortly in 3-4 slides are welcome and should contact us until 1 of June to share slides)
4) Discussion about possible inputs or data gathering that we can work on together (e.g., soil database that includes soil structural information)
5) Breakout groups, interactive work, or mural discussion
6) Wrap up and follow up activities (e.g. planning of sessions at conferences, new ideas on PTFs, …)
Contact: Lutz Weihermüller; Yonggen Zhang