Education and awareness raising activities of the British Society of Soil Science

The British Society for Soil Science (BSSS) http://www.soils.org.uk is an international membership organisation and UK based charity committed to promoting the study and profession of soil science in its widest aspects. The Society is committed to reaching out to the public at large to educate and inform on the importance of soils to us all. The Society has adopted a range of approaches to soil education, tailored to the needs and aims of different audience types. We have developed the 'Working with Soil' initiative http://www.soilscientist.org/workingwithsoil which provides practicing soil scientists and potential funders with a set of professional competencies aligned to specific aspects of work. From 2013 The Society has developed a program of courses aligned to these documents aimed at meeting the professional development needs of those undertaking such work. So far these have focused on fundamentals of field characterisation, sampling and mapping which have been very well received, especially by early career practitioners who have had less exposure to field work. We have also produced posters and leaflets that demonstrate a range of soil functions which support human society, for example 'Soils in the City' and 'Soils of Britain'. These were originally developed in a more traditional formal style. The materials have also proved popular with local authorities, regional horticultural clubs and higher education establishments, notably agricultural colleges where they have been used to support student learning in both timetabled and project work. We have subsequently produced a further set of materials aimed at a much younger audience. We deliberately chose slightly quirkier names for these, for example 'Soils and Time Travel' and 'Soils and Spaceship Earth' as a hook to capture the child's imagination. These were designed by a specialist company who used a less formal language, the use of cartoons and alternative images and a wider range of font styles and sizes. This material has been distributed to all the secondary education schools in Great Britain, and receives very positive feedback from educators and pupils alike. The Society has also been highly visible at the BBC Summer of Wildlife roadshows over the summer of 2013. This involved a visual display of soils with two 'hands on' activities "What's in the Soil" and "Build your own Wormery". Each activity was supported with an A4 leaflet that people were able to take home or download from the website (www.soils.org.uk/education). The Society attended all four of the main roadshow events reaching an audience of more than 60,000 members of the public ranging in age from 1 to 100! The Society took to the live stage event during the Leeds show with CBCC "Wild" show presenters to talk about the formation of soils and the role of Earthworms. Some soil scientists who were very reticent about their involvement were actually very good at it and enjoyed it! So lets all get out there and do some more

Suitport Feasibility - Development and Test of a Suitport and Space Suit for Human Pressurized Space Suit Donning Tests

The suitport concept has been recently implemented as part of the small pressurized lunar rover (Currently the Space Exploration vehicle, or SEV) and the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV) concept demonstrator vehicle. Suitport replaces or augments the traditional airlock function of a spacecraft by providing a bulkhead opening, capture mechanism, and sealing system to allow ingress and egress of a spacesuit while the spacesuit remains outside of the pressurized volume of the spacecraft. This presents significant new opportunities to EVA exploration in both microgravity and surface environments. The suitport concept will enable three main improvements in EVA by providing reductions in: pre-EVA time from hours to less than thirty minutes; airlock consumables; contamination returned to the cabin with the EVA crewmember. To date, the first generation suitport has been tested with mockup suits on the rover cabins and pressurized on a bench top engineering unit. The work on the rover cabin has helped define the operational concepts and timelines, and has demonstrated the potential of suitport to save significant amounts of crew time before and after EVAs. The work with the engineering unit has successfully demonstrated the pressurizable seal concept including the ability to seal after the introduction and removal of contamination to the sealing surfaces. Using this experience, a second generation suitport was designed. This second generation suitport has been tested with a spacesuit prototype using the pressure differentials of the spacecraft. This test will be performed using the JSC B32 Chamber B, a human rated vacuum chamber. This test will include human rated suitports, the suitport compatible prototype suit, and chamber modifications. This test will bring these three elements together in the first ever pressurized donning of a rear entry suit through a suitport. This paper presents design of a human rated second generation suitport, modifications to the JSC human rated chamber B to accept a suitport, and a compatible space suit to support pressurized human donning of the pressurized suit through a suitport. Design challenges and solutions and compromises required to develop the system are presented. Initial human testing results are presented

Interactions between soil microbial communities, erodibility and tillage practices

The soil biota are a vital component of belowground systems, driving many key processes such as nutrient cycling, underwriting soil structural integrity and providing crucial ecosystem services to the wider environment. In agricultural systems, tillage practices are known to impact upon both the soil biota and surface erosion processes, but little is understood about the relationships between these three factors. This work addresses this issue within the framework of an EU Life/ Syngenta project “Soil and water protection for northern and central Europe” (SOWAP). Within this component of the SOWAP programme, the influence of different soil management practices on the size and overall composition of the soil microbial community was determined and related to the propensity for erosion, at a variety of spatial scales. Microbial biomass and phenotypic structure, measured using phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis, were used to determine the effect tillage had on microbial communities at sites in Belgium, Hungary and the UK. The field sites were split into differing tillage practices on the same slope. Samples were taken prior to, and three years after, the adoption of inversion (conventional) and non-inversion tillage techniques. In addition, samples were taken periodically from two sites in the UK (Loddington, Leicestershire and Tivington, Somerset) to assess the temporal changes in microbial community size and structure under the tillage practices. Other soil, agronomic and ecological properties were measured at the field scale by SOWAP project partners. These field trials were supported by small plot rainfall simulations at the Loddington field site and by laboratory-based microcosm-scale studies using manipulated microbial communities and controlled rainfall, to further characterise microbial effects on soil erodibility. The results showed that across the European sites microbial community size was reduced in conventionally tilled soils. However there was no effect of tillage type on microbial biomass at the Tivington site after three years. Microbial community structure showed significant seasonal changes greater than those relatable to tillage type. It was notable that the fungal biomarker PLFA 18:2ω6 decreased in conventionally tilled soils. The small-scale experimentation using rainfall simulators and manipulated microbial communities was designed to specifically observe relationships between soil microbial communities, water movement and erodibility. These experiments showed that the presence of microbes in soils impacted upon both erosion processes and hydrological properties. There was a trend showing a decreased sediment concentration in runoff from soils containing a living microbial community. Propensity to runoff and infiltration was altered differentially as a result of microbial inocula derived from soils under different tillage practices. There was evidence that there was a specific and characteristic fraction of the microbial community susceptible to mobilisation by runoff and infiltrate waters, and hence potentially prone to relocation within the ecosystem. Linking the laboratory experiments to field rainfall simulations demonstrated the difficulty of controlling environmental variables, particularly at larger scales. Nevertheless, the same basic trends were observed at both laboratory and small plot scales.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Interactions between soil microbial communities, erodibility and tillage practices

The soil biota are a vital component of belowground systems, driving many key processes such as nutrient cycling, underwriting soil structural integrity and providing crucial ecosystem services to the wider environment. In agricultural systems, tillage practices are known to impact upon both the soil biota and surface erosion processes, but little is understood about the relationships between these three factors. This work addresses this issue within the framework of an EU Life/ Syngenta project “Soil and water protection for northern and central Europe” (SOWAP). Within this component of the SOWAP programme, the influence of different soil management practices on the size and overall composition of the soil microbial community was determined and related to the propensity for erosion, at a variety of spatial scales. Microbial biomass and phenotypic structure, measured using phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis, were used to determine the effect tillage had on microbial communities at sites in Belgium, Hungary and the UK. The field sites were split into differing tillage practices on the same slope. Samples were taken prior to, and three years after, the adoption of inversion (conventional) and non-inversion tillage techniques. In addition, samples were taken periodically from two sites in the UK (Loddington, Leicestershire and Tivington, Somerset) to assess the temporal changes in microbial community size and structure under the tillage practices. Other soil, agronomic and ecological properties were measured at the field scale by SOWAP project partners. These field trials were supported by small plot rainfall simulations at the Loddington field site and by laboratory-based microcosm-scale studies using manipulated microbial communities and controlled rainfall, to further characterise microbial effects on soil erodibility. The results showed that across the European sites microbial community size was reduced in conventionally tilled soils. However there was no effect of tillage type on microbial biomass at the Tivington site after three years. Microbial community structure showed significant seasonal changes greater than those relatable to tillage type. It was notable that the fungal biomarker PLFA 18:2ω6 decreased in conventionally tilled soils. The small-scale experimentation using rainfall simulators and manipulated microbial communities was designed to specifically observe relationships between soil microbial communities, water movement and erodibility. These experiments showed that the presence of microbes in soils impacted upon both erosion processes and hydrological properties. There was a trend showing a decreased sediment concentration in runoff from soils containing a living microbial community. Propensity to runoff and infiltration was altered differentially as a result of microbial inocula derived from soils under different tillage practices. There was evidence that there was a specific and characteristic fraction of the microbial community susceptible to mobilisation by runoff and infiltrate waters, and hence potentially prone to relocation within the ecosystem. Linking the laboratory experiments to field rainfall simulations demonstrated the difficulty of controlling environmental variables, particularly at larger scales. Nevertheless, the same basic trends were observed at both laboratory and small plot scales

Report to NERC : InformaTec Soils : report for the InformaTec-Soils meeting at Defra, Nobel House, March 14th 2011

InformaTec is a 2-year, NERC-funded project that seeks to identify how to manage the increasing wealth of environmental data and information so that it can be transmitted, distributed, stored, archived, analysed and visualised, and in so doing, aims to recognise and develop opportunities for knowledge and technology transfer, both nationally and internationally. As such, InformaTec addresses a major objective of the NERC science strategy, namely, the “exploitation of technological advances to develop improved methods of monitoring environmental change.” InformaTec-Soils is one component of InformaTec; other aspects of the project focus on environmental monitoring, data standards, interoperability, and distributed computing. The specific aim of InformaTec-Soils is to draw together key players having interest in the collection and synthesis of large-scale soil data sets with a view to identifying what needs to be done to improve understanding of soil and environmental change. As part of the InformaTec-Soils initiative, a meeting of 24 experts from across the UK was convened at Defra, in London, on 14 March 2011. Through presentations, roundtable discussions and breakout groups, the meeting explored, current informatics, methodological and cultural challenges, and constraints, to the synthesis of UK and European soils data for understanding soil and environmental change. This report presents a vision for an ecosystems approach to soils and summarizes the conclusions and recommendations of the meeting held in London. As well as identifying opportunities for the soils community generally, the report will be presented to NERC to inform decisions on future funding. The authors of the report extend their gratitude to all who contributed to the meeting and the production of this report. The report identifies the following important research topics for soils: Key areas for research: 1) Framework development. 2) Quantifying the soil resource, stocks, fluxes, transformations and identifying indicators. 3) Valuing the soil resource for its ecosystem services and natural capital. 4) Developing management strategies and decision support tools. Within these 4 key areas for research we identify the following 5 major challenges that the NERC technologies theme should address: Major research challenges: 1. Ecosystem approach to national soil monitoring; how we measure and model at a range of scales. 2. Exploit new technologies for airborne, ground based sensor networks, and molecular biology techniques to link from structure through to function and on to service. 3. Develop data accessibility (via cloud), and integration by exploiting new data IT tools (eg Open MI) to support projects building exemplar or baseline data/models eg EVOp project (Community). 4. Decision support tools, simple, practical tools for people trying to utilize and visualise data for a range of common purposes (e.g. planning). 5. Pathways to ‘valuation’. How do you link users perceptions of value to the parameters created by the data and models? (e.g developing techniques from social–science research in terms of perceptions and value judgements). Some of the challenges and opportunities to arise from the meeting with regard to ‘Data Handling’ and ‘Measurement Methods and Technologies’ are identified in two appendices to the report