soilhealth.app
soilhealth.app is a major rebuild of the open data entry app "atlasbiowork." Soilhealth.app is designed to support participatory watershed or community science, and a shared, localized, evidence-based intelligence on the complex and emergent relations between sunlight energy, ecosystem function, and human decisions. This is the opportunity for human society to learn how to work with the most powerful planetary force: coupled carbon and water cycling. This learning cannot remain exclusively digital, but information technology can play a support role in recording and sharing evidence and feedback, and displaying observations and data on maps with a variety of additional layers and contexts.
Participatory watershed or community science around carbon and water cycling can help students, land managers, citizens, and professionals engage with the various flows and variabilities of solar energy, in addition to the more popular emphases on species, substances or elements (such as C, N, or P), problems, and practices.
A platform, not just a pipeline.
Webinar January 20, 2021 with Land and Leadership Initiative.
Land Listeners workshop
Soil health is increasingly recognized as a key or hub for water cycling, watershed function and water quality, atmospheric regulation, human health, and of the viability of civilization itself. Yet soil health remains camouflaged by our natural human focus on problems. These problems organize and categorize our policy efforts, government and foundation funding, the disciplines of knowledge, and the boundaries between them.
If we can grasp soil health and watershed function, we have great potential to connect most of our serious problems and challenges into actionable opportunities. Yet we can turn this opportunity back into problems with our traditional modes of information delivery: lectures, dogma, expert information, and even advocacy of best practices.
Confucius said, Tell me, and I forget. Show me, and I remember. Let me do it, and I understand.
"When a problem can't be solved, enlarge it." (Attributed to Eisenhower.)
A one-day initial session introduces the complexity of soil health, watershed function, and supporting principles through simple hands-on and participatory demonstrations and experiments that participants can share with others. Because these are not merely technical issues, we also introduce some skills and practices of participatory learning: wider and more inclusive frames and contexts, listening to others learn, and acknowledging problems and barriers while clarifying opportunities to learn to work with the sunlight-powered circle of life, coupled carbon and water cycling, the most powerful planetary force.
We adapt each session to the needs and skill levels of the participants.
Rancher-to-Rancher
The California Rancher-to-Rancher project can help you set up a small, no-risk learning site trial on your land, say a few acres or less, where you could concentrate livestock for a few hours or a day, and give it a substantial recovery period from grazing. Our support could be help in planning the trial to work with your needs, simple monitoring of the soil surface, and an optional soil carbon baseline plot. More info.
Learning resources
For schools and communities, a collection of resources around soil health and watershed function. More info.