Harvest Addresses the 4th Conference on Semiarid Soils

César Izaurralde, a member of the Harvest Hub at the University of Maryland and professor at Texas A&M University, spoke on the challenges for the sustainable management of semiarid soils under evolving climate change at the Fourth Argentine Conference on Semiarid Soils. The Argentine Conference on Semiarid Soils was organized by the Argentine Soil Science Society and held at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina on September 25-26, 2019.

Dr. Izaurralde is a co-lead for Harvest on the Cropland Carbon Monitoring System (CCMS) project which uses a satellite-based system to evaluate carbon flux for U.S. crops. Additionally, his research efforts with Harvest expand to include gaining a better understanding of biomass emissions from residue burning, soil quality estimation, and soil quality effects on rural well-being. In his presentation at the conference, Dr. Izaurralde emphasized the improvement of soil organic matter to enhance soil quality and the need to develop integrated production systems that reduce soil erosion, improve productivity, and enhance ecosystem services. Other sessions covered soil organic matter dynamics in semiarid environments, recycling of animal waste, digital soil cartography, ecohydrology, and remote sensing tools for semiarid environments.