I-Corps: Infrared Laser Absorption Spectroscopy for Soil Monitoring

I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是采用了评估土壤和地质材料实时状况的新标准。极端天气波动和自然灾害的发生有可能加剧土壤侵蚀，减少可用土地、土壤肥力和对病虫害的抵抗力，从而永久性地扰乱现代社会和农业做法。尽管可用土地数量有限，但不断增长的人口将对农业生产提出更大的需求。有助于改善养分管理、种植和收获技术的技术将有助于可持续粮食生产。此外，鉴于矿山尾矿坝的严重破坏，需要更好的土壤特征和监测技术。采用实时、远程测量地质材料，可以提高采矿和大型土建作业的安全性。最后，更频繁和强烈的野火导致了更多的野火后泥石流。与潜在的泥石流有关的危险必须加以识别和描述。该项目将探索的光学、非接触式远程测量技术有可能影响社会以及从精准农业到采矿、减灾和建筑等多个市场和行业。这个I-Corps项目将探索光学红外技术的应用。将探索的具体技术是在实验室和现场规模上开发的，用于远程测量土壤特性。提出的创新将通过实现土壤/作物条件和肥力以及静态和动态土壤参数的远程测量来推进农业和岩土工程实践。在该技术开发之前，没有任何方法可以在野外远程测量土壤吸力。由于测量不需要与土壤接触，也不需要收集土壤或水样，因此测量是非破坏性的。此外，快速收集的测量数据将包括大面积的许多数据点，比传统的逐点数据收集方法提高了空间和时间分辨率。无需安装劳动密集且成本高昂的现场仪表。所提出的技术还具有节省与传统实验室土壤性质分类相关的时间和成本的潜力，并且还可能改善一些传统测试方法重复性差的问题。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the adoption of a new standard for assessing the real-time condition of soil and geomaterials. The occurrence of extreme weather fluctuations and natural disasters have the potential to permanently disrupt modern society and agricultural practices by increasing soil erosion and decreasing usable land, soil fertility, and resistance to pests and disease. Growing populations will place more demand on agricultural production despite constrained amounts of available land. Technologies that assist with better nutrient management, planting, and harvesting techniques will aid in sustainable food production. Additionally, the need for better soil characterization and monitoring techniques are required in light of prominent failures of mine tailings dams. The safety of mining and large earth construction operations may be improved with the adoption of real-time, remote measurements of geomaterials. Lastly, more frequent and intense wildfires have led to more post-wildfire debris flows. Dangers associated with the debris flow potential must be identified and characterized. The optical, non-contact remote measurement technology that will be explored in this project has the potential to impact society as well as several markets and industries, ranging from precision agriculture to mining, hazard mitigation, and construction.This I-Corps project will explore the applications of optical infrared technology. The specific technology that will be explored was developed at the bench and field scale to remotely measure soil properties. The proposed innovation will advance agricultural and geotechnical engineering practices by enabling remote measurements of soil/crop condition and fertility, as well as static and dynamic soil parameters. Prior to the development of this technology, no method existed to remotely measure soil suction in the field. Because the measurements do not require contact with the soil, nor the collection of soil or water samples, the measurements are non-destructive. Furthermore, the rapidly collected measurements obtained will include many data points over a large area, improving spatial and temporal resolution over conventional point-wise data collection methods. The need to install labor-intensive and cost-prohibitive in situ instrumentation is then eliminated. The proposed technology also has the potential to save time and costs associated with conventional laboratory classification of soil properties and may also improve upon the poor reproducibility of some conventional testing methods.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.