Award details

Strategies for combining models and measurements in environmental monitoring

Reference	BBS/E/S/00000467
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Richard Lark
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor Andrew Whitmore
Institution	Silsoe Research Institute
Department	Silsoe Research Institute Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	204,700
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2002
End date	31/10/2004
Duration	31 months

Abstract

If changes in the carbon content of the soil are to be monitored, this must be done in the presence of considerable spatio-temporal variability. Handling this variability simply by intensifying the rate of sampling in space and/or time is unlikely to be feasible for routine monitoring purposes. However, if the spatio-temporal variability of soil carbon can be partitioned into a deterministic component and random variation, then sampling can be designed specifically to minimize the effect of the latter and the result may be much more efficient estimation of the temporal change. Given the value of being able to monitor changes in carbon content and other properties of soil as accurately and precisely as possible, it seems important to see if cokriging or other spatio-temporal techniques in combination with process models, can improve the efficiency with which changes in a soil property are measured. We are developing the mathematics to do so within this project and will evaluate the mathematical techniques initially using soil carbon data generated from published semi-variances of soil organic carbon or organic matter.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Engineering & Biological Systems (EBS)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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