Carbon Sequestration of Soil - converging sensing with AI to monitor the quality and carbon carrying capacity of soil

土壤固碳——传感与人工智能融合，监测土壤质量和碳承载能力

• 批准号: 88928
• 金额: $ 10.47万
• 依托单位: UNIFAI TECHNOLOGY LIMITED
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=88928
• 关键词: Carbon; Sequestration; Soil; converging; sensing

COVID-19 hit the agriculture sector hard. Farmers need new, diverse sources of revenue if we are to maintain a thriving UK rural economy. The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) estimates dairy farmers alone lost £28m in April and May due to COVID-19\.At the same time, climate change is probably the largest single threat to our planet and our civilisation. Recognising this, in June 2019 the UK Government showed global leadership by passing a commitment into law to achieve Net Zero by 2050\. Every sector in the UK economy will have to make fundamental changes if we are to achieve this bold vision, and we will have to develop new ways to measure and sequester carbon.Understanding the role of natural capital in achieving Net Zero is essential, and this means more than just planting trees. DEFRA recognised this in the recent Agriculture Bill, which paved the way to replacing current Direct Payments to farmers with a new payment scheme which will reward farmers for reducing emissions and better managing soil quality.This project is aimed at helping resolve both challenges.By using sensing and artificial intelligence to monitor and understand soil quality, including the microbiome (bacteria, fungi and other organisms), in order to measure, verify and improve the carbon sequestration of soil, we will not only help the agriculture sector to achieve Net Zero, we will unlock new revenue streams for COVID19-hit farmers through accessing carbon credit markets.The role of natural capital in combating climate change is being more widely recognised, but the role soil plays in the carbon cycle has so far been difficult to measure in a practical way for farmers and agronomists. This project will resolve that challenge by using both existing data sets and data from new inexpensive sensors, integrated with UnifAI's proven artificial intelligence capabilities, to demonstrate a cost effective and simple to deploy solution for continually and remotely measuring and monitoring the carbon sequestration of soil.UnifAI Technology already has a strong and proven capability in combining low-cost sensing with AI to create highly innovative environmental monitoring capabilities in water. UnifAI's water quality solution uses a small number of directly measured parameters and a trained Artificial Neural Network to understand the real-time quality and microbiome of water, including the presence of harmful bacteria such as _E.Coli_ and _Legionella,_ and understanding the risk of eutrophication events and biofilm build up.Expanding this ground-breaking work from water to soil was interrupted by COVID-19 when UnifAI, like many companies, saw commercial activity slow and in some cases stop altogether. We are now back on track, and with this InnovateUK grant we can get back to helping farmers in the UK and eventually elsewhere to diversify their revenue streams through the carbon trading markets, and to ensure that they adopt the right techniques and practices to maintain and enhance the quality and carbon sequestration capacity of the soil in their care in order to help decarbonise the agriculture sector.

COVID-19 对农业部门造成了沉重打击。如果我们要维持繁荣的英国农村经济，农民需要新的、多样化的收入来源。农业和园艺发展委员会 (AHDB) 估计，由于 COVID-19，仅奶农在 4 月和 5 月就损失了 2800 万英镑。与此同时，气候变化可能是对我们的星球和文明的最大单一威胁。认识到这一点，英国政府于 2019 年 6 月通过了一项到 2050 年实现净零排放的法律承诺，展现了全球领导力。如果我们要实现这一大胆的愿景，英国经济的每个部门都必须做出根本性的改变，我们必须开发新的方法来衡量和封存碳。了解自然资本在实现净零排放方面的作用至关重要，这不仅仅意味着植树。 DEFRA 在最近的《农业法案》中认识到了这一点，该法案为用新的支付计划取代目前对农民的直接支付铺平了道路，该计划将奖励农民减少排放和更好地管理土壤质量。该项目旨在帮助解决这两个问题。通过使用传感和人工智能来监测和了解土壤质量，包括微生物组（细菌、真菌和其他生物体），以便测量、验证和改善碳排放 封存土壤，我们不仅将帮助农业部门实现净零，还将通过进入碳信用市场为受新冠疫情影响的农民释放新的收入来源。自然资本在应对气候变化中的作用正在得到更广泛的认可，但迄今为止，农民和农学家很难以实际的方式衡量土壤在碳循环中的作用。该项目将通过使用现有数据集和来自新型廉价传感器的数据，并与 UnifAI 经过验证的人工智能功能相集成，来解决这一挑战，以展示一种具有成本效益且易于部署的解决方案，用于持续远程测量和监测土壤碳封存。UnifAI 技术已经拥有强大且经过验证的能力，将低成本传感与人工智能相结合，创造高度创新的水环境监测能力。 UnifAI 的水质解决方案使用少量直接测量的参数和训练有素的人工神经网络来了解水的实时质量和微生物组，包括大肠杆菌和军团菌等有害细菌的存在，并了解富营养化事件和生物膜形成的风险。将这项突破性工作从水扩展到土壤的过程被 COVID-19 中断，当时 UnifAI 等 许多公司的商业活动放缓，在某些情况下甚至完全停止。我们现在又回到了正轨，借助 InnovateUK 的这笔赠款，我们可以重新帮助英国乃至其他地方的农民通过碳交易市场实现收入来源多元化，并确保他们采用正确的技术和做法来维持和提高其照料的土壤的质量和碳封存能力，从而帮助农业部门实现脱碳。