The 2013 Alberta Soil Science Workshop was held from February 19-21 in Lethbridge, with the theme 'Futursol: A New World Order.' Over the course of three days, participants heard from keynote speakers, plenary speakers and poster sessions related to what's happening in Alberta related to soil - from agriculture to forestry to land reclamation. The Alberta Land-use Knowledge Network was pleased to record many of the sessions from ASSW 2013.
Dr. Roland Kroebel outines where ecosystem modeling for agriculture is moving in a presentation to the 50th Alberta Soil Science Workshop. Starting with a GHG calculator, HOLOS, Dr. Kroebel proposes adding a number of other models, for carbon, soil moisture, nitrogen and environmental footprints to create a "Virtual Farm" concept. The key to all this is access to data. This means other scientists need to be willing to share their datasets to create a robust modelling system for Canadian agricultural production.
Dr. Roland Kroebel is a Research Scientist doing ecosystem modelling with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta.