Mobile Data Tools Used in Soil Survey for the First Time

Posted on January 25, 2012

In December, AfSIS sent two staff members to Ethiopia to help Ethiopia’s Agriculture Transformation Agency launch a new country-wide soil research initiative. The soil collection teams used Android-based tablets for their work, marking the first time that soil research has … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Mobile Data Collection Presentation

Posted on January 19, 2012

Last week, Eric Couper, AfSIS’ ICT and Agriculture Coordinator, had the opportunity to discuss AfSIS’ mobile data collection work with colleagues and students affiliated with Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Chris Planicka wrote about the presentation for the New Media Task … Continue reading →

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Preliminary Assessment of Miombo Woodland Biomass

Posted on December 12, 2011

The Miombo woodlands, which are dominant in subtropical eastern and southern Africa (Angola, Burundi, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), are being severely degraded due to intensified human pressure. Encroachment of cultivation … Continue reading →

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AfSIS Scientists Using New Data to Predict Soil Properties

Posted on December 12, 2011

Scientists working with the Africa Soil Information Service shared new data and techniques for mapping key soil and land characteristics during a week-long data analysis session at the AfSIS East Africa regional labs in Arusha, Tanzania. The hands-on session, which … Continue reading →

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Preliminary Lab Results Show Low Phosphorus Across Sentinel Sites

Posted on December 5, 2011

Reference lab data from the AfSIS sentinel sites analyzed so far show an over-riding constraint of low available phosphorus (<30 mg kg-1) and often low exchangeable bases (<8 cmolc kg-1) and exchangeable K values (<0.5 cmolc kg-1), indicating the widespread … Continue reading →

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ICRAF Soil-Plant Lab Processed 8,000 AfSIS Soil Samples

Posted on December 5, 2011

Here at the Soil-Plant Spectral Diagnostics Laboratory at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya, we have received over 4,000 AfSIS soil samples from sentinel sites and diagnostic trials over the past six months, with a total of over … Continue reading →

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Experiences from ICT4Rural Development Conference- Part 2

Posted on November 16, 2011

November 1-3, Eric Couper, AfSIS ICT and agriculture coordinator, participated in an ICT4Rural Development conference hosted by SANGONeT in Johannesburg, South Africa. We’ve included a few notes here for those who couldn’t make it. In a previous post, we covered … Continue reading →

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Experiences from ICT4Rural Development Conference- Part 1

Posted on November 15, 2011

November 1-3, Eric Couper, AfSIS’ ICT and Agriculture Coordinator, participated in an ICT4Rural Development conference hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa by SANGONeT. We’ve included some notes here for those who couldn’t make it. In a follow-up post, we will highlight … Continue reading →

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Reducing Transportation Time and Costs with Open Street Maps and Locus

Posted on November 14, 2011

N.B. This post assumes some knowledge of an Android app called Locus Free. To read more about how we used Locus Free for navigation and geospatial sampling read this post first. —- Imagine that your organization is working in a … Continue reading →

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Meta-Forms: Creating a Survey of Your Survey

Posted on October 28, 2011

As we have been highlighting on this blog, there is a lot more that goes into a survey than writing up questions and then asking people those questions. Surveying requires hiring, training, device selection, translation issues, logistics, and so on … Continue reading →

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