Digital Soil Core

The Digital Soil Core (DSC) is a probe with 7 independent sensors that is pushed into the ground at a continuous rate that enables the DSC to characterize the full soil profile to a depth of 120cm+ in about 1 minute. The DSC is part of the LandScan Platform for Discovery site characterization and analysis system where it is digitally synchronized with other complimentary technologies. While LandScan is focused on agricultural applications of the DSC, there are many other applications outside agriculture as well.

Ways to Utilize the DSC

Understand Plant Performance and Behavior

The most powerful and unique use of the DSC is to calibrate remote sensing and understand the ‘why’ and ‘what to do next’ between the conditions that exist and the goals around production and environmental stewardship. If analytical quality remote sensing data is available, then the DSC can be used to develop a dynamic calibration and provide objective ground-truthing between plant performance and behavior and the growing environment. Crop classes created using spatial, spectral, and thermal information dimensions are used to target the investigation of the relationship between a plant and the soil in which it is growing. The DSC data profile is digitally synchronized with the Digital Vegetation Signature (DVS) which enables the discovery of associations not possible with analog or subjective data.

Exploratory, Discovery, and Research

The DSC can be used to investigate and monitor the soil-water profile relationship under different irrigation practices throughout a growing season or used to baseline and monitor soil carbon and health over time under different practices. It can be used to set up research plots to avoid data noise caused by changing soil conditions within plots or understand and account for the variability if it can’t be changed. If seeds, microbes, fertilizers, and irrigation technologies work differently in different soils then understanding the soils in which they are developed and tested will bring them to market faster and with more confidence.

Outside of agriculture, the DSC can be used for mineral exploration, natural landscape assessment, archeology, levee and dam investigations, and much more.

Geophysical Mapping

Sometimes you need a map of the soil and the current vegetation, or lack thereof, isn’t important. In these instances, LandScan may still utilize remote sensing for DSC location targeting, but we also integrate a best-in-class off-the-shelf electromagnetic induction (EM) sensor and obtain an initial screening of the response from this sensor integrated with high-resolution topography data. It is very important to further delineate the variability detected with the EM sensor, as equivalent EM responses very rarely guarantee identical soil profiles even within the same field.