Decoding Nitrogen Dynamics in Soil through Novel Integration of in-situ Wireless Soil Sensors with Numerical Modeling

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Excess nitrogen leaching from agricultural and horticultural lands into waterways is a long-standingchallenge for agricultural sustainability and environmental protection. An effective approach to improvingthe water/fertilizer use efficiency is through precision farming practices guided by real-time monitoringand near-term forecast of crop irrigation and fertilization needs. However, this initiative is hampered bythe lack of reliable sensing technologies and modeling tools for elucidating the spatiotemporal variabilityof soil moisture and nitrogen concentration. The current state of the art is to collect soil samples at fieldsites and bring to the laboratory for analysis, which is prohibitively expensive, labor-intensive, and isunable to track the transient variation of soil nitrogen content in a timely manner.This interdisciplinary collaborative US-UK SitS project aims to tackle the grand challenge of decodingnitrogen dynamics in the soil through seamless integration of four innovative solutions: hydrogel-coatingsolid-state ion-selective membrane (HS-ISM) based wireless nitrogen sensing technology, droplet-flowmicrofluidic-based sensors (DFMS) as in situ calibration, high-resolution profiling of nitrogen speciesand moisture level in different ecosystems, and data-driven modeling of rhizosphere nitrogen dynamics.Together, this project will transform existing labor-intensive and inefficient soil analysis practice toautomated and highly efficient soil nitrogen dynamics decoding and field modeling strategy, and thusadvancing the underlying science and engineering of soil nitrogen dynamics and providing guidance forsustainable agricultural and ecosystem management.