I have been exploring software that integrates soil science and agrology into the digital world. I recently started learning a program called APSIM. We can use these types of programs to predict different yields to crops based on different agricultural techniques like conservative tilling, or even test how different soils will fare under the same circumstances.
We can set which variables we want included in our report in the report page. You can see I’ve mostly input variables related to water infiltration and runoff in the soil. We can also see there will be an output for the nutrient NO3. These softwares use mathematical equations and real world past climatic data to calculate our outputs. We can also choose how often we want data reported. In this case, we want measurements each day.
You can see our outputs are all of the variables we specified for in the report page, and they are reported each day.
I used this simulation to compare the runoff in heavy clay soils Vs sandy soils. As expected, on the day that received heavy precipitation, the clay soil could not drain well and was subsequently saturated for the rest of the season.
These softwares are important because we can test different agricultural techniques in seconds, rather than years. We can also get instant feedback on what the health of the soil will be after these practices.
I’m excited to keep familiarizing myself with APSIM and other softwares like it. Stay tuned for more! This was part of APSIM’s module 1 for learning the software.
Jaron Rosso Wiigs 