Soil Ontologies and Informatics

The mission of the Soil Ontology and Informatics Cluster is to connect the soils research community and those whose research incorporates soils data to informatics tools for better research. We recognize that there are numerous international efforts ongoing to harmonize soil data collection and taxonomy, and we strive to support these efforts by streamlining communication within the community, providing use cases for standards, and providing a test bed for proposed tools. While developing new ontology and informatics tools is one possible outcome, where possible we will contribute to existing efforts. We remain committed to serving the international soils community.

We will do this by 1) promoting research exchange between the informatics and soil science community, 2) creating how-to resources and tools for soil data harmonization, and 3) targeted development of semantic resources such as ontologies and other informatics tools for soil science.

News 24 March 2021 2300 UTC Discussion lead: Kathe Todd-Brown (UF) Pathways forward, see notes. 10 March 2021 1700 UTC Presentation: Emilio Mayorga (Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington) “Cross-Site Soil and Microbial Ecology Cyberinfrastructure for the CZIMEA EarthCube Project” 24 February 2021 2300 UTC Discussion lead: Kathe Todd-Brown (UF) Continue development on https://github.com/ESIPFed/SOI_harmonization. Review data descriptors and what's needed to identify data diversity in issues section. Archive

Activities Biweekly meetings on Wednesdays 16:00 / 23:00 UTC Community presentations to inform about ongoing soil informatics work Working group actions: Ontology development Resource review Data model summaries Other activities of interest to the community

Get Involved Email List:[1] Community calls Meeting URL: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/512941637 You can also dial in using your phone: United States: +1 (571) 317-3116 (Access Code: 512-941-637) See ESIP Community Calendar for int'l phone numbers. 18 November 2020 - 2300 UTC Presenter: Megan Wong (CeRDI - Fed Univ Australia) CeRDI soil vocabulary efforts, updates and lesson's learned 2 December 2020 - 2300 UTC Discussion lead: Mark Schildhauer (NCEAS) Review bulk density methods and what folks look for in search terms when using datasets/databases Look for commonalities and think about how to describe in an ontology 16 December 2020 - 1600 UTC TBD

Resources Google Doc for Notes: [2] Google Doc of Cluster Proposal: [3] Chair: Kathe Todd-Brown (University of Florida) Co-Chairs: Tanja Williamson (USGS) Brandon Whitehead (Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research) Dylan Beaudette (NRCS-USDA)