[00:00:22] Bridget Scanlon: I would like to welcome Nima Shokri to the podcast. Nima is the Chair and Professor of GeoHydroInformatics at Hamburg University of Technology, and also the Executive Co-director of the United Nations University Hub that focuses on Engineering and Climate Adaptation Strategies. His work emphasizes AI and machine learning driven methods and algorithms and advanced modeling to analyze and predict factors that affect soil health.
And Nima has done a lot of different things, but today I think we're just going to focus on soil health because he's very passionate about it and he wants to talk about it. And it's so fundamental to many different aspects. So Nima, I enjoyed visiting with you recently and you were describing how soil health is so fundamental to food security, water resources, ecosystems, and managing climate extremes and addressing the sustainability development goals.
Maybe you can define what you mean by soil health, and then also how it's linked to many of the UN sustainability development goals and all these other sectors.
[00:01:36] Nima Shokri: Thank you for the introduction and I would like just to thank for the opportunity and it's a pleasure to be here to discuss with you about the importance of soil health. And that's the right question. What do we mean by soil health? And so I'm, qualitatively speaking, you can refer to soil health as I think that is USDA definition that is that the soil health refers to the continued capacity of soil to function as an important element in ecosystem that sustains vegetation, humans, and animals. So that's the kind of a qualitative explanation of that. But when it comes to the quantitative explanation, what do you mean exactly by soil health? How can I compare, let's say soil health in Texas compared to Hamburg?
Give me a number. Then the discussion is much more complicated. And it's not surprising because you could as well define soil health as a function of the usage that you have in mind. What is healthy for application one may not be healthy for application two.
There is a rising interest, to develop quantitative indices that enable us to understand, to quantify, to put a number on soil health on the different basic banded conditions. You mentioned UN SDGs that, I mean, unfortunately, or I don't know, fortunately, there is no SDG dedicated to soil. But it's very difficult or it's, I would say it's even naive to think you can achieve SDGs without paying attention to your soil health. I mean, some of them are quite straightforward to see the direct connection.
Let's say SDG number two, like zero hunger. That's, I guess, kind of obvious if you don't have healthy soil, so no. No. It'll affect your food security, obviously. Or life on land, I believe that's SDG number 15. So these are obvious ones. But less obvious one for example, I know SDG number eight when you talk about economic growth, right?
So, of course many countries around the world, almost all countries actually, agriculture is an important part of the economy, especially local economy and so on and so forth. So if your soil is not healthy, if you cannot produce healthy crops, that obviously will affect the economic growth.
And also it goes to, let's say, SDG one that is no poverty, or for example, in talking about good health, SDG number three, clean water. Reduce inequality, for example. That's another one. Obviously, when the soil is not healthy, that will affect the farmers, that will affect the income, that will affect the GDP.
That causes forced migration as well and we all know what's the consequence of those things. And in all of these topics, soil health is at the center of that. But unfortunately, you still see many people that when they call soil, they don't even call it soil.
They call it dirt. They say my pants got dirty, right? While, our very foundation depends on soil and to me, when it comes to soil, compared to some other environmental topics, which are rightly covered properly in the media by public and all public awareness and all that, soil is utterly under represented and so I think interviews like that will contribute to this bigger goal.
[00:04:56] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. It's so foundational for many different sectors like food, water, ecosystems and everything. But then that we don't really focus on it oftentimes, or the reporting, the reporters don't focus on it. But I did see, just glancing at the news, in the US they recently were reporting dust storms in the Midwest, in Illinois and Chicago. And they attributed to large storms, strong winds, loose topsoil, and dry farm fields. This was the National Weather Service. We think about the thirties, dust storms, and that we think we're done with it. We figured that out, we're okay.
But really we have to be very vigilant and continuing and we can't get comfortable thinking that we have it sorted. And so, I like your emphasis. It's a global issue and that we need to emphasize it. And when it's out of sight, out of mind, people kind of ignore it then.
You mentioned when we discussed before what Roosevelt said way back when, and the Dust Bowl and the conditions then, and then the formation of the Soil Conservation Service. So, oftentimes a huge environmental issue oftentimes leads to some positive action.
[00:06:04] Nima Shokri: Absolutely, dust storms are a perfect example of why soil health matters. So to have dust essentially, I mean, of course there are many parameters affecting dust, but some of the key elements you need: loose soil, fine particles so they can fly for over a long distance.
Dry soil, not too much water in the soil, right? And a strong wind. And this element, when they're together, then you could potentially have basically dust. And the formation of dust is another kind of reminder for us that the map the soil has, in my opinion, it requires global cooperation. Let's say, in Spain, hypothetically speaking, you don't manage your soil properly, there will be lots of salt at the surface of the soil deposited, salinization, and all that, right? And then when the dust storm comes these saline particles can travel thousands of kilometers. So something happened in Spain, but people thousands of kilometers away, different countries, different places, different businesses even, will be affected by those salty dust storms. It's very reductionist to think that we can solve these grand environmental challenges locally. Like, we can't put a wall around the city so that the dust doesn't come, which is partly because of the unhealthy soil. So if you wanted to address these topics fundamentally, definitely demands, it requires global cooperation.
[00:07:25] Bridget Scanlon: And I guess, local action like in the Midwest, the Soil Conservation Service, cover crops in the winter, so the soil isn't fallow, no-till agriculture so that you're not loosening up the soil, and many of these other practices. So those people need to do that also in addition to recognizing that many of the issues are global. We talk about soil health, but also the linkage to human health, with the dust storms and everything, and a big impact on human health also.
[00:07:55] Nima Shokri: I'm very happy you brought it up, because under no means, I didn't mean a local decision doesn't play a role, of course. But my point is that if locally you manage your soil, it doesn't mean you are safe because if the neighboring estates or neighboring countries are not taking care of the soil, you will be affected by the dust generated from the neighboring countries.
Definitely it requires local management coupled by some sort of international cooperation. It just doesn't work. Physics is physics. It just doesn't work. The dust takes off, let's say from, I don't know, Cherokee, and it can go to Iran and the other way around, so you cannot manage it locally.
However, obviously if you do it internationally but not locally, that's the same problem. So it's really, there should be an organic interaction between local management and broader corporation.
[00:08:43] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And also, do you see a lot of linkage or are you involved at all at linking it to human health or do you interface with that at all, Nima?
[00:08:52] Nima Shokri: Oh of course, on the topic of dust, we are actually heavily investing in dust in my institute in Hamburg, with a couple of students and postdocs, and one element there is human health, actually. As you mentioned, when you inhale dust, it can have many consequences on you ranging from- I read paper on that topic, I believe it was Lancet, I'm not sure. But there are some data suggesting that it may affect the brain operation, Alzheimer's. And, which is not surprising because if the dust is very small, it joins the blood stream and it can go places where it is not supposed to be.
And digestion, of course, the lungs-
[00:09:29] Bridget Scanlon: Asthma and stuff like that.
[00:09:31] Nima Shokri: That's just the obvious one, but of course, there are less obvious ones. For example, if the soil is a degraded soil, it's just more difficult to grow something. And not all countries in the world have the technologies that are practiced or utilized in US. And there are places that everything is done manually. So it's just more tedious, more time consuming, more resource demanding to grow the crops in those areas. And that obviously will affect human health and the economy.
'Cause when you affect the economy, obviously education will be affected, your health will be affected, food quality will be affected, mental health will be affected. So everything is connected. So that's why in the past few years, I was hoisting the banner that soil health matters. And we have to pay attention to that.
[00:10:18] Bridget Scanlon: And even that National Weather Service report was mentioning zero visibility. So driving-
[00:10:23] Nima Shokri: There you go.
[00:10:23] Bridget Scanlon: That's probably one of the most dangerous things we do. So, much of my work focuses on water resources, and soil, and the land surface is very important for water because when you hit the land surface, then you partition the water into evapotranspiration with vegetation or runoff or recharge.
And so a healthy soil then will be very important for water resources. Maybe you can describe that a little bit.
[00:10:50] Nima Shokri: Absolutely. There is a very strong nexus between soil and water. I would say climate as well, because they're all connected. Let's say for example, climate will affect soil through temperature, through soil moisture, right? On the other hand, for example, soil affects vegetation, right?
Soil affects the vegetation and the quality of the crops. Vegetation will affect climate and soil through evaporation, for example, or organic matter input, for example. Water is the same as storage. So when, let's say, there's precipitation and the runoff, the infiltration in soil, the groundwater recharge, all of this they are basically influenced by the structure of the soil, by how healthy is the soil.
So to me it's incomplete. If we wanted to look into, let's say climate, or let's say water resources, or let's say soil, the same story soil, you only focus on that domain. I think you will not have a holistic view. You may come up with something that fixes your issue like locally again, but since you are not considering the interaction within this element, with the other element, the solution may not be sustainable. So there is a very strong, very deep, connection between all these resources you mentioned, water, soil, climate, vegetation and that's why, I think, some sort of a nexus approach must be utilized to study this phenomenon.
[00:12:09] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. I think one of the first jobs I had was related to radioactive waste disposal. We were looking for sites that had almost no groundwater recharge because we wanted the aquifer to be protected. And so, we got into looking at the soil zone, and is there recharge? Is there no recharge?
And one of the key things that we saw was, if you have high chloride concentrations in the soil water, then that means that there's no recharge. And so this chloride, in the southwest US, in the Chihuahuan desert in West Texas and New Mexico, built up over 10,000 years, since the last glacial period.
And so, this was really good for radioactive waste disposal. And so it moves us into the topic of salinity and your work in salinity. So, sometimes, in many similar areas, you have this buildup of salt because the vegetation is removing more water than is coming in.
And so, that tracks then the water movement and helps us define what's going on. I was very surprised, you think in these desert regions if you have like El Niño or you have a precipitation for a couple of years or something like that, that you would get a lot of water movement.
But what seemed to happen was, the vegetation just took off. You have these desert blooms. And then they zap all the water and so there's no recharge. And so vegetation was very important, even these desert settings we had weighing lysimeters and all sorts of things. So maybe you can describe your work on soil salinity.
[00:13:38] Nima Shokri: Okay. So I mean, soil salinity is the topic that I do for a living essentially. So I've been working on that almost for 15 years. We work on salinity at different scales and we are interested in processes literally at nano scale. So we have like high resolution image, we go down there and like nanoscale, microscale.
Up to the global scale. And so we wanted to understand the physics of soil salinization and what basically causes soil transport and deposition in soil. But also on the other hand, we want also to understand the extent of salinity globally and how it may react to different environmental changes in near and far future.
I mean, maybe I can just build up on what you said. So imagine you have soil or like sand particle or glass speed. For example, this column, you pack it with sand or soil and add some salty water here and you can do it actually in the kitchen yourself.
I mean, I do it for my daughter. I did once an experiment with her. And so just leave the cup there for a few days and the water will evaporate. Right? Naturally. So as water evaporates, the concentration of the salt increases. And after a certain concentration, crystals form, and then you can see actually, which is very fascinating, for children especially, that at the surface you see the formation of a white kind of crust, and that is the precipitated salt. So water comes to the surface, evaporation occurs at the surface, and ions stay there. And then we did a lot of work on how different parameters, let's say particle size of the soil, let's say composition of that solution. Let's say the atmospheric conditions, let's say properties of the particles, like how angular the particles and structure of the soil.
How do these parameters influence these just simple mechanisms I explained, basically? And not only in terms of the salt deposition and crystallization, but also how does that affect the evaporation process? How much water you lose because of the evaporation? And that's important because you want to close your water balance. For the water balance for water cycle, you need an accurate estimation of the evaporative fluxes. So we did a lot of smaller scale experiments and tests and modeling from synchrotron x-ray tomography to neutron radiography, to laboratory experiments to understand the physics of this process.
That's one part of the activity we did, and I can talk five hours about that, but to look into the process globally, we generated, I believe, the first global map of the soil salinity on the different climate scenarios in the near future and far future. And to do that, we utilized AI and big data analytics. And if you're interested, I can explain later on a bit more about that. And we generated the maps of soil salinity globally with a high spatial resolution and annual resolution, high spatial and temporal resolution was one year globally.
We have some studies as well, we show that what we learn at the smallest scale, because a lot of people ask, why do you do this smaller scale experiment? You go to Argonne National Lab in Chicago and you run this massive, expensive, experiment and you have couple of grains next to each other and look into the, I don’t know, transport of salt to among these five grains.
What's the point of that? If you are talking about soil salinization which is a global problem, and so on and so forth. Interestingly in some of our work, we see that what we learn at the pore scale, what we learn at the smaller scale, when we understand the physics, when we understand the process, what is the governing mechanisms? Then we can explain the global responses. We go to the global dataset. And we apply the knowledge we obtained from the smaller scale experiment, and we see that using that physics, using that process, we can actually describe what is happening globally, which is always encouraging to show we can cross actions scales and yeah.
I hope I answered your question.
[00:17:44] Bridget Scanlon: So that was fascinating and I really enjoyed watching the YouTube video. You had a YouTube presentation of the synchrotron experiments and I thought they were fascinating. And, I jumped from, I did my PhD in carbonate karst systems. And then my first job was unsaturated zone hydrology.
So without, Google or without any search engines or whatever, I had to learn. And most of it was phone calls with experts. But I thought those images were incredible. And you could see at the pore scale, that the air invades, and so, the large pores are filled with air, and then the water is at the soil connections.
And you looked at sand, and you compared with clay, and you saw those wet areas develop in and a more widespread in the clay. And then you saw the evaporation related, and the higher concentration then in the sand. And I really enjoyed, you did an experiment looking at the depths, one meter or two meter of a water table.
[00:18:42] Nima Shokri: I see that you really read- you looked into my work.
[00:18:45] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, because it was, because, I mean, we want to know, what does soil texture have to do with salinization? What does water table depth have to do? What does climate and the demand for the water have to do with these? And then as you said, then you were able to link that to your global mapping, which was incredible. And so, because sometimes we oftentimes diss people who do these very detailed experiments, "oh, nobody will ever use your results." Or whatever,
[00:19:13] Nima Shokri: Yeah.
[00:19:14] Bridget Scanlon: And it's kind of difficult to keep going. But you very nicely linked those synchrotron experiments, those very detailed XRT data, to help you understand and develop and predict. And you know you are correct.
I was looking long time ago for global maps of soil salinization. And I think I had EMI data and things like that, but would you show, how your global maps greatly improved, on Food and Agriculture Organization maps or any other groups that were trying to put stuff out there? So kudos to you for doing that.
[00:19:46] Nima Shokri: Thank you. Thank you. In fact, FAO I believe it was December, 2024, they released the global assessment of soil salinization. And in their report, they used some of the figures we had in those papers to show basically the global map of the salinization. What you mentioned about different parameters is really to the point that yeah, for example, when you talk about climate or let's say weather, like let's say it's temperature. When the temperature changes, you affect the evaporation. And just simple experiment I explained here, when you affect the evaporation, the velocity of that these ions are transported through the soil profile will be modified.
And what is the soil salinization? It's essentially the excess, accumulation of salt in the soil, right? So then you will have small salt. Or the water table, is a very interesting aspect here because depending on the texture of the soil, whether it is fine texture, or coarse texture, the water table may reach the surface.
Or it may wet above the water table up to a certain depth below the soil surface, right? And so if the water table is brackish, if there is salt in the water table so that salt will be transported through the soil profile. So it's a combination of the depths of the water table, the soil texture, and many other parameters, a climatic parameters, parent material. And these are, by the way, all of them are kind of a, let's call it natural kind of parameters. Another important parameter is anthropogenic activities, human related activities, that let's say if you don't have proper irrigation practices in place, or if the quality of the water that you use for the irrigation of your soil is low, right? Or is salty water. That will obviously impact the soil salinization.
So, I remember one of the earlier papers we, I think we published in 2020. Where we didn't talk about future, but the current status of the soil salinization globally. That was, I think it was in PNAS. Back then, we listed 43 different parameters that could potentially impact the soil salinization. And with AI, we could kind of, build a model relating the soil salinity to these 43 different parameters and we map the salinity and so on and so forth.
[00:22:00] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. Many regions, for example, Australia, they had a big problem with soil salinity issues. Because when they developed agriculture way back in the 1900s, they were replacing eucalyptus vegetation, deep-rooted vegetation with crops, and then they had fallow periods. So they increased the recharge, then the water table rose to the land surface, and they had dryland salinity.
And then I was just interviewing Azeem Shah recently in Pakistan. So they were using a lot of surface water irrigation and then water logging and then salinization. Then they switched to groundwater. So there's no free lunch, it seemed like wherever you turn. But it's managing the tradeoffs.
[00:22:43] Nima Shokri: And that actually reflects on the complexity of this problem. It's really a complex problem. And that's why for many of the questions that we don't have the answer because it's just so complicated. Sometimes you feel or you think, okay I know how to solve this one, or I found a solution.
And then you fix this part, but another part is now a new problem. Soil is a very complex system, as simple as this. It's just very complex system. Let alone, we didn't talk at all about, let's say, biodiversity for example, that the fact by salinity level or not, everything is basically connected when it comes to soil and soil health.
[00:23:18] Bridget Scanlon: Right. So you do a lot of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and that's what you use then to try to develop this global map. And it's extremely powerful approach. And you mentioned 43 variables that you threw at it. And it is nice that with AI, you can throw the kitchen sink in there, and then let it rank things and give you an understanding.
Then you have training data and validation. Maybe you can describe the methodology because I think that's very important for people to understand.
[00:23:49] Nima Shokri: Yeah, absolutely. What AI offers in this context is that it might, that is my opinion, so I might, I'm normally wrong, by the way, so, so it's my opinion. I
[00:23:59] Bridget Scanlon: Me too.
[00:24:00] Nima Shokri: So with AI we can include, we can consider, we can quantify, the impact of many more parameters than was previously possible by, let's say, mechanistic approaches because you need to develop the equation.
Let's say how, I don't know, price of tomato. Price of tomato influences the soil salinization in Hamburg, hypothetically speaking. But what equation you want to use for that, right? And there is not enough data to build. What's the physics behind that? What's the chemistry behind? But we know that may impact that possibly if, I don't know, I mean, I don't want to get into how the tomato can affect salinity. So the AI offers is you could consider many more parameters in describing the phenomenon that you're interested in. So in the case of salinity, of course, the backbone of this type of calculation is data. And your model is as good as your data.
If your data is low quality, the model prediction is not that useful. But if you have high quality data, so in this particular paper that the current state of the salinity. So we had thousands of data points using different global databases, voices and other places that for a given spot, they measured salinity for a given spot.
And then in those, let's say I believe, we had about 200,000 points, globally. So on that 200,000 points, then we go and we identified like 40 plus, 43 different environmental parameters, whatever you wanted to name it. It is, just name it, it was there.
And for this 200,000 point, we went and we identified, we quantified, we had the data. Some of them were measurements, so some of them were from remote sensing, and so on and so forth. So for 200,000 spots, we have 43 parameters for every spot. And then you make a massive table essentially.
Let's call your target parameter. That is your target. You wanted to predict the salinity. So one column is your salinity in that 200,000 spots, and then 43 other columns, are those environmental parameters. It could be temperature, could be precipitation, vegetation, slope.
Clay content, sand content, you just name it. Right? And then, so I have 200,000 points. I have the salinity and in those points I have 43 different parameters. So here the assumption is that these collection of parameters, they can describe the observed salinity. And then you expose this large table to an AI algorithm, and you force the algorithm to find the relationship relating your target parameter to the predictors. Okay? And then you do testing, you do validation. And then if you are happy with the validation- So normally what we do is like a certain fraction of the data, we don't introduce it to the algorithm. So the machine does not see those data. Let's say we put 20% of the data, the model is trained based on that 80% data that is left. And then I use this model to describe that 20% that the model did not see before.
Okay. So when you're happy with the quality of your prediction. And then, so I have this measurement on 200,000 spots in the world, right? But many areas in the world, I don't have the measurement. So what I do, I go to every spot, depending on the resolution that you have in that particular paper, it was kilometer scale.
So every kilometer by kilometer in the world, we go, we identify that 43 parameters that we have from satellite, we from this, we have from that, and then we have these 43 parameters. We put it in our kind of equation or model. And then we get the value of the salinity. So I have the salinity of that particular spot, and then I do it pixel by pixel and then I can get the map of salinity.
And when we wanted to predict the future, what we did was that so we learned a little bit more about the process. So in our next paper, when it was 2021, there when we talk about the near future and far future salinity, we reduced, as you mentioned, whe we had 43 parameters, we realized some of them don’t have such an impact on salinity.
So we got smarter a little bit. And then in the next study, we reduced the parameters to, I believe, 14 parameters. And out of these 14 parameters, five parameters were kind of climate related parameters or time dependent parameters. Nine were like other things, but five. Let's say for example, if I remember correctly, let's say evaporation or let's say, I don't know, temperature stuff like this, and then for these parameters, I have the future prediction.
So I assume, let's say soil texture, I assume doesn't change. I assume, okay, soil texture doesn't change, but temperature may change. But since for temperature, there are climate models predicting the future, I use those parameters into the train model to show me how, let's say salinity may change on the different climate scenarios.
That's how we did it.
[00:29:00] Bridget Scanlon: That was very interesting and it's great that you were able to collate all those data. And we have so many different data sets now, remote sensing, measurements, model output and all sorts of things. And, we are increasingly being forced to look at all of it. And so this is a way to do that.
That was fascinating. And I saw you had a lot of zeros, so you turned it into a binary data. Is it saline or is it not? And you picked a threshold conductivity then to represent that. And then is the map really a probabilistic output or is it of the salinity or do you have uncertainty estimates with the map?
[00:29:38] Nima Shokri: So, in that particular paper you are talking about, if I do, if I remember correctly, I think we did not have, let's say, the map of the standard deviation of these predictions, but in our current work that we are doing, we actually just finished this paper we submitted last week. There we actually included, so we generated the map with a different resolution and different like focus.
And all of those maps came with the corresponding, let's say a standard deviation for every pixel cells and uncertainty how applicable is data and so on and so forth. So you mentioned the threshold that four decimeter per meter. That was a very important number because that is what you say,
then you label the land, you are saline and you are not saline land. And that is as well another open topic, open question in the community that what is the saline soil? I mean, what should be the salinity level? And in that paper, we have a paragraph we actually discussed about that, that different organizations, they have different thresholds.
So FAO has one threshold. I don't know. Other organizations have other thresholds and they vary quite a lot actually. So this is a I would say certainly an open question and that can benefit many that if we can come up with a less subjective way to say, this is saline and this is not saline.
And I think part of the difficulty, or if you want to call it confusion or I don't know is because it's really, partly it depends on your application as well. It depends. You are running a vineyard or you are running a potato farm, and that adds to the complexity of the problem. Land use, essentially.
[00:31:11] Bridget Scanlon: But so, Nima, when I was looking at the map of the data that you had to develop the global map, you can see very high density of data in the US and in Europe and everything, and then zip in a lot of places. So it's really nice that you can develop these predictive skills then where you have the data and then apply them to other regions.
And it may be that some places don't share the data or whatever, but this is really powerful. It's really nice to see a global map. And then also where did you find the biggest issues with salinity? That would be important.
[00:31:45] Nima Shokri: On the, if I may, I'd like to comment on the data point you mentioned. It's very correct that a lot some places, not a few places in the world, a lot of data like us, certainly. Europe as well 'cause of this Lucas campaign (Land Use/Cover Area frame statistical Survey) we have. But many, many areas in the world, they don't have data or they don't release the data, whatever.
You are right, this AI now enables us to basically we train our model using thousands and thousands of data points. And then we can use this model to predict, let's say, salinity in Iran, for example, or in the Middle East. But kind of potential limitation is that whether or not we like so the model might be biased toward those data. Because the models are trained using those data. So of course there are ways to deal with that, and we always do that. We always do that. But obviously the reliability of the models, the reliability of the prediction, would be significantly enhanced if we have a fairer distribution of the data globally.
So if we have adequate number of data points from Africa, from Asia, from other places, and then we run the model using all these data points, I think that is that is very important. Your second part of your question ?
[00:33:03] Bridget Scanlon: Where did you find the biggest problems with salinity from the global analysis?
[00:33:08] Nima Shokri: Exactly. So I, I wish my paper was in front of me, but I believe places like China, places like Iran, places like I think even Saudi Arabia, a lot of places in arid and semi-arid areas mainly, a lot of them were there. But also there are, for example, you look at USA, California, I do remember, I think I had just, it takes me five seconds to check the paper.
It was published five years ago. But I think California, for example, stood out in the map. I remember. But Middle East was very much affected. Middle East was very much affected. Many regions were quite affected. North Africa, Middle East, and places like part of Australia, as you mentioned, part of Australia certainly that was one of the affected areas.
[00:33:47] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. I really enjoyed your Forbes article.
[00:33:51] Nima Shokri: Oh yeah.
[00:33:52] Bridget Scanlon: And the quote in there, "Unlike people, dust particles require no visa to cross international borders. They can travel effortlessly thousands of kilometers from one country to another." And then, emphasizing that's a transboundary issue in need of serious global cooperation.
So maybe you can describe that a little bit. And just last month in June, NOAA had reported Saharan dust moving across the Atlantic to the US and they were tracking by satellites. The Saharan earlier, so maybe you can describe your Forbes article. I couldn't read the whole thing because I didn't have access, but.
[00:34:26] Nima Shokri: Yeah, I'm sorry about that. But absolutely, I mean, this is really the core of my point that I'm trying to promote in different platforms and different forums that I joined. That these problems are really, I think, it's misleading if we focus only locally. This will not do the job.
We might be able to locally for temporary solve the issue. But if the issue, let's say, persists in neighboring countries, neighboring states, so many environmental events may happen that cause the transport of those stressors to your region that is very well kept.
Let's say, unfortunately I hear the news from US regarding the flood, the ongoing flood, and I'm very sorry about that, but have you talked about the effect of such flooding on the spread of the salinity across thousands or hundreds of kilometers?
Because all this flash floods, essentially, they wash out all the salt that is from location A and bring it far, far away it could even go to other cities, other states, or the dust as you mentioned. Let's say that you have a saline lake. And saline lake is shrinking. And then there are lots of salty particles in the bed of that lake. And then the dust comes. So the saline lake might be shrinking because of local mismanagement, because of construction of too many dams, because of maybe expansion of, I don't know, the crop land, maybe the change in the climate, change in the precipitation patterns.
For whatever reason, this is shrinking. And then, the wind comes, and then when the soil is dry, to dissolve particles, they just go to different countries. We have actually simulation of that process. A number of years ago, we had a paper where we showed that these dust particles, saline dust particles, they cross countries within 24 hours. And that was not a AI based calculation. It was a mechanistic, or process-based simulation that we showed that if in this particular kind of a spot, if there is this particular, let's say, a storm occurs, which had the precedent. In 2018 we had that storm. We said if the same storms happen again, this dust, this salty dust can go thousands of kilometers.
That's why I said that, yeah, they don't apply for the visa. They just crossed the boundaries. And that is valid almost for all environmental problems. So let's say groundwater contamination. So it's not like Austria, and then they stop at German border and then they communicate with the chairman.
It doesn't work like that. So the contaminates groundwater just comes in, right? So this is why I think it would be great, I know it sounds extremely challenging and probably close to impossible, if we could establish a dialogue among nations. And there's a common interest because everybody likes to live in a healthy environment.
As long as you are a sane person, you prefer to have clean water, clean air, clean soil. And so if we could establish international dialogue to promote global cooperation around some of these environmental problems, I think that is an absolute necessity to fundamentally address these challenges. I'm not understating the importance of the local management. Of course, if you don't care about your soil, obviously you lose the quality of your soil. But I'm saying that if you take care of your soil, but others don't, it does not necessarily mean you are safe. It doesn't work like that. Environmental problems, they're interconnected and there are transboundary issues.
[00:37:45] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah. Yeah. I think the local management is a necessary but not sufficient condition.
[00:37:51] Nima Shokri: That's exactly what I wanted to say. Yes.
[00:37:53] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And you mentioned President Roosevelt way back in the thirties, even saying, "the nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself." And when we were recovering from the dust bowl. Oftentimes when we have a big issue like that, we end up being stronger after it. So the Soil Conservation Service formed in the mid thirties, and so, a disaster can promote a positive action and help us improve conditions.
[00:38:21] Nima Shokri: That's true. I think that is the positive side of that, and I agree with that. I think we should learn from all these experiences and hopefully that will help us, that will enable us to come up with more robust approaches and reliable modeling and results and tools to basically protect us, as well as ecosystems. We are a part of that, to protect the human animals ecosystems against all these uncertainties. All these future uncertainties, be it climate or be it anything else. I think,
[00:38:52] Bridget Scanlon: Right.
[00:38:52] Nima Shokri: Creating this sense of urgency that we need to care about our soil. But what breaks my heart is that, as I said, I mean, I hardly see discussion about soil health and it's just surprising why there is so much little said about the importance of soil while on daily basis, almost on daily basis, you're dealing with soil health.
Because did you have breakfast today? Did you have lunch? Did you have dinner? So most likely that food that you had was from soil! End of story. It's very funny how for granted we get soil. And how fragile is that? So it takes, I don't have the reference at the moment, but I think I read once, I might be wrong, but I think I read once that it takes about thousand year to make about a centimeter of soil. I can Google that
[00:39:43] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah. Yeah I saw that too. Yeah.
[00:39:45] Nima Shokri: Yeah, so, right. Yeah.
[00:39:46] Bridget Scanlon: Long time. Yeah.
[00:39:48] Nima Shokri: Let's agree on the long term. It takes long time to create a little bit of soil, but it literally takes one hour to destroy.
You just go down and add the very hazardous contaminant to the soil and the soil just loses its function.
[00:40:02] Bridget Scanlon: Nima, I think soil carbon and soil organic matter is so important. And so if you improve that then, you have so many co-benefits. So I mean, some people say, well, we need water for irrigation, for crop production in similar regions, but just providing the water alone is not sufficient.
You need the nutrients and if you have good soil carbon. And so, the co-benefits of improving soil health are enormous. And I think if people realize that, then, we would emphasize it more.
[00:40:34] Nima Shokri: Absolutely. I mean, carbon, for example, nowadays, everybody, or a good portion of them, they like climate. They like climate. They talk about CO2 and all this stuff but I don't know how many people know that the amount of the carbon that is stored in soil is massively more, like, massively more than the amount of the carbon that is in the atmosphere.
So imagine if the soil is degraded. If this carbon is released to the atmosphere, that's basically game over. It's like literally speaking. So the soil, when it comes to carbon sequestration, soil plays an important role. So, as you said, there's lots of co-benefit here, and that's why you need like some sort of nexus approach.
So climate affects soil. But soil as well affect climate and carbon that you mentioned is a perfect example of that. Only if the people understand that there is no need to have isolated topic of climate. Isolated topic of soil is actually massively, deeply, heavily interconnected.
[00:41:36] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. And Nima, you are part of this new program in Europe called AI for Soil Health. That's a big project, I think about $13 million. Maybe you can describe a little bit of what the goals of that project are.
[00:41:51] Nima Shokri: Of course. Sure. Yeah. That's like a flagship project at the European Union level. That's called something called like emission call AI for soil health. So the idea essentially is to digitalize the European soil. And we aim to kind of develop an app that with a very high resolution, every 30 meter across Europe. Yeah, it's 30 meter across Europe, using AI and many other approaches, modeling tools to give information about soil health across Europe and see how different parameters affect soil health and also quantify soil health producing new in indexes, how to basically compare the soil health in Romania compared to, let's say, I don't know, in Poland or in Germany, and with a very high resolution.
And so that's the idea. But my main contribution is about soil salinity obviously, and soil degradation. And also we produce educational materials aim at, I would say general public, but definitely they're useful as well for bachelor's students, master's students.
As well as teachers who for example, I know, my team just today sent me a, now they produce one of the videos on bulk density, and they go to the field, they explain what is bulk density. They show how to measure that. They show the devices 3-4 minute videos. So I am producing some educational material in that project together with the map of soil sanity across Europe and soil degradation.
It's a very large project, so I think like 25 + European organizations and institutions are involved. So it's not only me getting that. But the project lot of partners and I think like 27 EU institutions are involved and I am only one of them.
[00:43:37] Bridget Scanlon: That's wonderful. That would be an incredible resource. And one last thing that I would like to talk with you about is this United Nations Sustainability Nexus. Analytics, Informatics and Data, AID.
And you have one part of it that's focused on the Soil Health Forum, what data are available, the machine learning approaches that can be used, and of course your salinity, nutrients, carbon and the global models and monitoring approaches. So I really like that and I like that short piece that you wrote, describing it and so, that, that's a great initiative.
[00:44:14] Nima Shokri: Yeah I mean, that AID program, Analytic Informatic and Data. So there are several modules there. So I lead the soil health module of that. And so the idea is basically, as you mentioned, that there are so much data and different tools flying around, different countries, different groups.
So the idea of the, soil health model is that to become big destination for data and tools related to soil health characterization. So let's say you are new in this business, you wanted to start your PhD or your company or your policy brief or whatever, you're going to get some data.
So we wanted to have all these different data sets from all around the world, as much as we can, in centralized that we put everything there. And we believe it will be a big help for modelers, for practitioners, for farmers, for policymakers. And so that's the idea, to make these tools available to many.
[00:45:06] Bridget Scanlon: Well thank you so much Nima. I jumped ship to work on soil a lot earlier in my career, and I must say that the soil community Peter Wierenga from Holland and from the Netherlands and Rien van Genuchten and everything. And Glendon Gee, they were all so helpful to me.
It was phone calls and taking notes. But they really helped me with that process, so really I really appreciate it. I think the community is very open and very helpful, and I really admire a lot of the work that you're doing. And I will release also highlights of this podcast with links to your papers, or to YouTube videos and things like that, so the listeners can access more information.
So, just to summarize, Nima Shokri is the Chair and Professor of Geohydroinformatics at Hamburg University of Technology. Thanks a lot Nima. Good luck your research.
[00:45:54] Nima Shokri: Thank you. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Bye.
