Grant: Alliance Grants

Canada's vast soil carbon stores present a significant opportunity for emissions reduction and climate mitigation. However, climate change, coupled with the agricultural sector's contribution to emissions, necessitates a comprehensive soil data infrastructure to support sustainable management and monitoring. The global need for soil resource inventories led to the establishment of initiatives like the Global Soil Partnership (GSP), where fragmented and incomplete soil data was highlighted as a concern. In Canada, recent recognition of the importance of soil data has highlighted its crucial role in informed decision-making and sustainable land management-both essential for achieving a net zero economy. However, existing soil data is outdated, and private sector data remains largely untapped. To modernize Canada's soil data infrastructure, this program focuses on addressing the systemic barriers related to data fragmentation, lack of baseline soil information, high analytical costs, and data sharing and privacy. Our program aims to provide comprehensive and updated soil data, benefiting producers, aligning with climate policies, and positioning Canada as a leader in sustainable agriculture and the carbon economy via the following research themes: (Theme 1) Developing the National Soil Data Inventory to consolidating national soil data and fill in data gaps; (Theme 2) Advancing soil analysis & chemometrics to revolutionize soil analysis and reduce costs using spectroscopic techniques; (Theme 3) Developing a suite of high-resolution soil maps and models for improved estimation of soil carbon sequestration potential and mapping of nitrogen mineralization rates; (Theme 4) Understanding the social and legal dimension of soil data sharing and governance to provide policy recommendations; and (Theme 5), Carry out an economic valuation of soil data and build an investment case for the long-term maintenance of the soil data infrastructure. Without this program, Canadians will be unable to track their progress toward achieving a net-zero economy, soil monitoring costs will remain prohibitively high and economically unsustainable, and Canada risks falling decades behind other developed nations.