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

农业和园艺用地中过量的氮素渗入水道是农业可持续性和环境保护的长期挑战。提高水/肥利用效率的一个有效途径是在作物灌溉和施肥需求的实时监测和近期预测的指导下进行精确耕作。然而，由于缺乏可靠的传感技术和建模工具来阐明土壤水分和氮素浓度的时空变异性，这一举措受到了阻碍。目前的技术水平是在野外采集土壤样本并带到实验室进行分析，这是一项昂贵得令人望而却步的劳动密集型工作，而且无法及时跟踪土壤氮素含量的瞬时变化。这一跨学科合作的美英SIT项目旨在通过无缝集成四种创新解决方案来解决解码土壤中氮素动态的巨大挑战：基于水凝胶涂层的固态离子选择膜(HS-ISM)无线氮素传感技术、基于液滴流动的微流控传感器(DFMS)作为现场校准、不同生态系统中氮素种类和水分的高分辨率剖面分析、和数据驱动的根际氮素动态模拟。该项目将把现有的劳动密集型和低效土壤分析实践转变为自动化和高效的土壤氮素动态解码和田间建模策略，从而推进土壤氮素动态的基础科学和工程，为可持续农业和生态系统管理提供指导。

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.