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Kathe Todd-Brown edited this page Jan 21, 2025 · 5 revisions

Purpose

The purpose of the SoilDRaH (Soil Data Rescue and Harmonization) project is to develop a community supported collection of R scripts to read, annotate, and integrate (harmonize or aggregate) data from different publicly available sources.

This work is being lead by the Todd-Brown Lab out of the University of Florida. We hold regular development calls every other week (agendas and notes in the Discussion).

Wiki

The purpose of this wiki is to provide reference and training material to support engagement with contributing to and using the repository.

History

This repository is preceded by two repository (SOCDRaH, and SOCDRaH2) and the result of prior work of the International Soil Carbon Network.

2024

Over the last year we moved to a new repository https://github.com/ktoddbrown/SoilDRaH with an expanded mandate for harmonizing data beyond soil organic carbon quantifications to all soils data (hence the name change!). We spent quite a bit of time building out the wiki https://github.com/ktoddbrown/SoilDRaH/wiki and are particularly proud of our new workflow https://github.com/ktoddbrown/SoilDRaH/wiki/Workflow-for-new-data-addition! The ISCN3 and FIA FS database scripts are live on the main branch with NCSS, CPEAT, and ISRaD very close to being done. We hope that we will be able to release ISCN4 in this upcoming year! We are continuing to document and evolve our workflow, with these two discussions (https://github.com/ktoddbrown/SoilDRaH/discussions/61 meta data structures for the project or data annotations and https://github.com/ktoddbrown/SoilDRaH/discussions/60 datum association/identification structures) being particularly relevant. Finally we are moving all our meeting documentation also over to git hub (see our last call of 2024 for example https://github.com/ktoddbrown/SoilDRaH/discussions/59).

ISCN Retrospective

The initial idea behind the network came from Chris Swanston, Rich Birdsey, and Jen Harden, who recognized a need for better communication and resource- and data-sharing between the many scientific communities interested in soil carbon. What then began as the (U.S.) National Soil Carbon Network in 2009 was later transformed into the International Soil Carbon Network (ISCN) in 2012 with a unanimous vote by the Scientific Steering Group. The mission and goals were preserved for this transition and were expanded in order to gain a global perspective.

Pre-2012:

Support for the National Soil Carbon Network included : USDA-NIFA (an AFRI NEE grant for developing the database and hosting workshops), Microsoft Research (in-kind contribution of programmer time for developing the SQL database), USDA-FS (salary and workshop support), USGS (postdoctoral salary for data contributions to the database), and significant time rendered from scientists contributing data, sharing information, and supporting science activities related to soil carbon.

Leadership was provided by Chris Swanston (USDA Forest Service), who chaired the Scientific Steering Group, and Luke Nave (University of Michigan), who served as network coordinator. Kris Johnson coordinated the early dataset contributions and initiated NSCN with its first NSCN workshop.

Services provided included a Microsoft-based platform for soil data, including carbon, nitrogen, and variety of soil attributes in support of understanding soil carbon budgets; job postings related to soil; communication platforms via list-serves; annual meeting information updates.

Post-2012:

Support for ISCN has included USDA-FS (continued support for web, database, and Coordinator salary through 2016); Stanford University (2016 workshop, 2016 annual meeting); Stockholm University (2016, 2017 annual meetings, publications); Univ. Alaska Fairbanks (2017 hackathon, 2017 annual meeting) and significant time rendered from scientists.

Leadership after Dec 2015 was provided by Jennifer Harden (Stanford University and USGS emeritus), Chairing the Scientific Steering Group; Gustaf Hugelius (Stockholm University), co-chairing the Science Steering Group; Kathe Todd-Brown (University of Florida), Avni Malhotra (Stanford University) and Eric Slessarev (Lawrence Livermore National Lab) co-coordinating the network. Services provided include Microsoft-based ISCN3 database; GIT repositories for accessing ISCN3 data plus ISCN4 datasets; GIT repositories for accessing specific new datasets in terminologies similar to ISCN3.

In 2020, Ben Bond-Lamberty (Pacific Northwest National Lab) took on the co-chair position after Gustaf Hugelius stepped down.

-- Taken from ISCN History (Accessed 22 October 2024)

Funding

Funding for work on this repository is the result of several grants, generally attached to a specific meta-analysis.

This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.:

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Presentations

This is a partial list of presentations and posters concerning SoilDRaH.

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