DSM Workgroup, S5, SSSA, meeting minutes

[Grunwald,Sabine]

Dear all

Thanks to all of you who attended the business meeting of the DSM Workgroup, S5, SSSA in Cincinnati. Below find the meeting minutes. Please take few minutes to provide your feedback on the yellow highlighted sections. We identified a candidate for chairing the DSM Workgroup in the future: Zamir Libhova (NRCS, Lincoln, NE). Since we have only one candidate I suggest if there is no additional candidate identified by Nov. 15 to move forward and welcome Zamir into the Chairs position.

 

Please also review the proposed sessions for the next SSSA meeting in Tampa (2013). Please send your feedback. We can submit one session proposal to S5 to be included in the program for the 2013 meeting.

 

It has been a pleasure serving you all.

 

Warm regards,

Sabine

 

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Business Meeting - Minutes

Digital Soil Mapping Workgroup (Div. S5, SSSA)

Tuesday, October 23, 2012, 5:30 PM

Millennium Hotel, Pavillion A, Second Floor

Current Chair: Sabine Grunwald

 

Reports / Past Year’s Activities

1. Global Soil Map.net (North American Node)

 

2.       Rapid Soil Carbon Assessment Project (U.S.); ongoing

 

3. MOU to strengthen national DSM: NRCS and several U.S. Universities (Utah State University, West Virginia University, University of Florida, and Purdue University). Potentially other universities can be added to the MOU.

 

4. Pilot project – digital soil survey of the Arrowhead Counties in far NE Minnesota (NRCS; scientific advisory team). Ongoing.

 

5. Linkages to Global Digital Soil Map Community, GDSM (ASA): There is some redundancies in activities between GDSM and DSM Workgroup. Enhance coordination between the GDSM Community and the DSM Workgroup. Discussion about the possibility to make the DSM Worksgroup an interdisciplinary workgroup under SSSA and ASA (cutting across different divisions and communities). Rules and guidelines need to be checked to explore possible options.

 

6. The DSM Workgroup organized the session “New Challenges for Digital Soil Mapping” (oral and poster sessions) at the ASA-CSSA-SSSA Meeting in Cincinnati, 2012. There were a total number of 25 papers presented in this session indicating a high level of participation, good quality presentations - great success. 

 

7. Update on DSM intercomparison project (U.S.): The soil and environmental database to launch an intercomparison project has been improved over the past year. Now, it has become a possibility to sketch out a potential project. Concerns were raised that other DSM intercomparison projects proposed by Dr. T. Hengl have not been blessed with participation. The point was made that other communities (e.g., crop modelers, Agmip; climatologist) are very successful to conduct intercomparison projects resulting in high impact publications. This suggests that there is value to advance science and understanding through intercomparisons.

 

 

Future Activities

1. Next steps DSM intercomparison project (U.S.): A concept paper will be developed to formalize the initiative (Grunwald). The concept paper can then be shared with the broader community of digital soil mappers.

 

2. Soil carbon crowd sourcing: The idea is good, but perhaps too ambitious considering other ongoing activities. The suggestion was made to data mine soil data from project reports and legacy projects (collaboration w/ retired faculty). This is an ongoing process in many States and has been completed for some of them. These legacy soil data have been incorporated into the national soil database (NRCS, Lincoln, NE). 

 

3. Ideas for session(s) – SSSA 2013 Meeting:

·         Digital soil assessments

·         Linkages between digital soil mapping and pedology

·         Beyond digital soil maps and models

 

4.       New Chair DSM Workgroup:

One candidate: Zamir Libohova - NRCS, Lincoln, NE

 

 

Information - Future meetings (DSM):

Pedometrics Conference, Nairobi, Kenya (Aug. 26-30, 2013)

https://sites.google.com/a/cgxchange.org/pedometrics2013/ (abstract deadline: Dec. 15, 2012)

 

Global Digital Soil Mapping Workshop, Nanjing, China (2014)

 

 

 

Join the DSM Workgroup:

Contact Sabine Grunwald (sab...@ufl.edu)

Communication tool – DSM Workgroup: DSM-workg...@googlegroups.com

 

 

Sabine Grunwald | Professor | Soil and Water Science Department | University of Florida | 2181 McCarty Hall | PO Box 110290 | 32611 Gainesville FL | Email: sab...@ufl.edu | Phone: 352-392-1951 x204  or 352-294-3145| Skype UN: sabgru | http://soils.ifas.ufl.edu/faculty/grunwald | http://ecolearnit.ifas.ufl.edu