IUCRC Phase I Iowa State University: Center for Soil Technologies (SoilTech)

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中心的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性-SoilTech支持的研究将满足几个行业部门的一些尚未解决的需求，从而在理解土壤动态过程方面取得重大进展。SoilTech将提供必要的基础研究，以开发了解土壤属性和管理土壤和自然资源的新的、更有效和更可持续的方法。爱荷华州立大学的贡献将集中在弹性地面传感器、天基遥感、碳核算方法标准化，以及开发可部署的土壤健康倡议，如污染物缓解和支持精准农业，利用多个世界级设施提供支持。这些机构包括生物世纪研究农场、生物经济研究所、植物科学研究所、爱荷华州营养研究中心、农业和农村发展中心、利奥波德可持续农业中心和人工智能弹性农业研究所。我们的劳动力发展计划包括创建包容性实习、培训模块和体验式学习模块。该中心网站将利用现有的机制将代表不足的学生纳入工作，包括麦克奈尔学者计划、路易斯·斯托克斯少数群体参与联盟和第一年荣誉计划。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 research teams at the SoilTech Center 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 and natural resources. Iowa State University contributions will focus on resilient in-ground sensors, space-based remote sensing, carbon accounting methodology standardization, and developing deployable soil health initiatives such as contaminant mitigation and support for precision agriculture, leveraging multiple world-class facilities for support. These include BioCentury Research Farm, Bioeconomy Institute, Plant Sciences Institute, Iowa Nutrient Research Center, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and Artificial Intelligence Institute for Resilient Agriculture. Our workforce development plan includes the creation of inclusive internship, training modules and experiential learning modules. This center site will leverage existing mechanisms for incorporating underrepresented students into the work, including the McNair Scholars Program, Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, and First-Year Honors Program.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.