IUCRC Phase I University of Southern California: Center for Soil Technologies (SoilTech), Lead Site

健康的土壤是维持生命、种植粮食、提供避难所、提供有弹性的基础设施和实现流动性所必需的，但目前对土壤及其动态的许多关键方面缺乏了解，例如水分和有机质含量的变化，以及这些变化如何影响土壤的健康和稳定。土壤技术中心(SoilTech)是南加州大学、爱荷华州立大学、康涅狄格大学和华盛顿大学的合作伙伴关系，旨在解决这一知识差距，其使命是支持与农业、国防、能源和环境相关的行业。通过召集全国各地具有互补专业知识的研究人员，并从广泛的行业、基金会和政府组织中招募行业咨询委员会成员，SoilTech将在了解土壤动力学方面取得关键进展。SoilTech将作为这些组织之间技术交流和研究的第一个此类中心，提供跨学科的知识综合和对其研究的广泛应用。SoilTech的参与站点有强大的教育和外展计划，针对STEM领域中代表性不足的人群。这些计划将培训下一代劳动力的土壤测量和监测实践，这将使社会广泛受益。SoilTech研究团队准备通过四个研究主题-土壤传感器和传感器网络；土壤建模和数据分析；土壤碳捕获和核算；以及土壤健康和可持续发展-在理解土壤动态过程方面取得重大进展。SoilTech支持的研究将满足几个行业部门尚未解决的一些需求。SoilTech将提供必要的基础研究，以开发新的、更有效和更可持续的方法来了解土壤属性并将土壤作为自然资源进行管理。在南加州大学，他们的研究贡献将包括开发小型和廉价的土壤水分、有机含量和污染物传感器系统，以及使用机器学习和人工智能的土壤数据分析方法，地面和无人机传感器群探测土壤剖面特性到根区，以及用于决策支持的土壤地理空间分析。他们的研究将考虑到多样性、公平性和包容性，并将其融入我们的工作。他们的劳动力发展计划包括创建新的课程和培训模块，利用南加州大学iPodia在线分布式教室、体验式学习模块，以及与NSF I-Corps Hub：West Region合作开展学生创业活动。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Healthy soils are needed to sustain life, to grow food, to provide shelter, to provide resilient infrastructure, and to enable mobility, but there is presently a lack of knowledge about many key aspects of soil and its dynamics such as variations in the moisture and organic matter content, and how these variations affect soil health and stability. The Center for Soil Technologies (SoilTech) is a partnership among the University of Southern California, Iowa State University, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Washington to address this knowledge gap with a mission to support industries related to agriculture, defense, energy, and environment. By convening researchers across the nation with complementary areas of expertise, and by recruiting Industry Advisory Board members from a broad range of industry, foundation, and government organizations, SoilTech will make crucial progress in understanding soil dynamics. SoilTech will serve as a first-of-its-kind hub for technical exchange and research among these organizations, providing inter-disciplinary knowledge synthesis and broad applications of its research. SoilTech’s participating sites have strong education and outreach programs addressing underrepresented populations in STEM fields. These programs will train the next generation of workforce in soil measurement and monitoring practices that will broadly benefit society. The SoilTech research teams are poised to make significant advances in the understanding of dynamic processes in soils through four research themes - Soil Sensors and Sensor Networks; Soil Modeling and Data Analytics; Soil Carbon Capture and Accounting; and Soil Health and Sustainability. SoilTech-enabled research will meet a number of as-yet unaddressed needs in several industry sectors. SoilTech will provide the underlying research necessary to develop new, more efficient, and more sustainable ways of understanding soil properties and managing soils as a natural resource. At the University of Southern California (USC), their research contributions will include the development of miniaturized and inexpensive sensor systems for soil moisture, organic content, and contaminants, as well as soil data analytic methods using machine learning and artificial intelligence, ground-based and drone-based sensor swarms to probe the soil profile properties to the root zone, and soil geospatial analysis for decision support. Their research will be conducted with considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion woven into the fabric of our work. Their workforce development plan includes creation of new courses and training modules, utilizing the USC iPodia online distributed classrooms, experiential learning modules, and collaboration with the NSF I-Corps Hub: West region for student entrepreneurial engagement.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.