Guest lecture for the course ‘Conservation and Sustainable Management of Soils: Tools and Practices’ as part of the Degree in Precision and Sustainable Agriculture (PASA); Guest Speaker: Dr. Leigh Ann Winowiecki, Global Research Leader of Soil and Land Health at CIFOR-ICRAF and Co-lead of the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH); Course tutor: Prof. Marcello Di Bonito.
Healthy soil is the very foundation of our food systems and provides several vital ecosystem services, from carbon sequestration to improving food and nutrition security, to regulating the water cycle to hosting biodiversity. However, land degradation negatively impacts over 3.2 billion people, globally. Efforts to combat desertification, to move from scarcity to prosperity, will need to consider how to scale soil health, globally. Continuing business as usual is no longer an option. In order to both stop further degradation and prioritize interventions going forward, a robust evidence base is needed. At CIFOR-ICRAF, we recognize the critical role of science and the need to bridge the gap between research, development, and private sector to accelerate impact on the ground. This presentation will highlight advancements monitoring soil health, land degradation and vegetation diversity, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. We will highlight the combination of on-the-ground field assessments, advanced data analytics, Earth Observation and citizen science to track changes overtime, including of soil organic carbon. These methods have been implemented and scaled across agricultural landscapes, rangelands, and forests, with a myriad of partners across forty countries across the global tropics.