Soil – Page 17 – ATTRA – Sustainable Agriculture

Test Driving the New LandPKS Land Monitoring App

October 29, 2020

In my work on NCAT’s Soil for Water Project, I’ve tried a lot of different ways of monitoring land and soil health. For years, I’ve been hearing about LandPKS (Land Potential Knowledge System), a mobile app that has been under development by the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) since 2013. I was excited to hear that a full version was released earlier this year, and a couple weeks ago I finally got around to installing the app on my phone and running it through some tests.
By Mike Morris, Director of NCAT’s Southwest Regional Office

Overgrazing and the Maturing of an Adaptive Grazing Thought Process

October 23, 2020

Close to 20 years ago, we noticed a discouraging event slowly unfolding on our pivot-irrigated pasture of 12 acres: The first 120 feet of the pasture starting from the pivot point was producing less and less grass in comparison to the remaining perimeter of the pivot.
By Dave Scott, NCAT Livestock Specialist