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

COVID-19重创农业部门。如果我们要保持英国农村经济的繁荣，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。认识到这一点，英国政府于2019年6月展示了全球领导力，通过法律承诺到2050年实现净零排放。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测量和封存碳。理解自然资本在实现净零排放中的作用至关重要，这意味着不仅仅是植树造林。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挑战。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），为了测量、验证和改善土壤的碳固存，我们不仅将帮助农业部门实现净零，我们将为COVID 19开启新的收入来源-通过进入碳信贷市场打击农民。自然资本在应对气候变化方面的作用正得到更广泛的认可，但土壤在碳循环中所起的作用迄今为止对农民和农学家来说很难以实际的方式加以衡量。该项目将通过使用现有的数据集和来自新的廉价传感器的数据来解决这一挑战，并与UnifAI经过验证的人工智能功能相结合，展示一种具有成本效益且易于部署的解决方案，用于持续和远程测量和监测土壤的碳封存。UnifAI技术已经拥有强大且经过验证的能力，可以将低成本，利用人工智能进行成本检测，以创建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经过训练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积聚的风险。将这项开创性的工作从水扩展到土壤被COVID-19中断，当时UnifAI，与许多公司一样，该公司的商业活动放缓，在某些情况下甚至完全停止。我们现在回到了正轨，有了这笔InnovateUK赠款，我们可以重新帮助英国和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保持和提高土壤质量和固碳能力，以帮助农业部门脱碳。

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.