PhD Oral Defense: Application of Proximal Soil Sensing for Environmental Characterization of Agricultural Land
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PhD Oral Defense of Ahmad Suhaizi Mat Su, Department of Bioresource Engineering
Sustainable agriculture involves optimizing yield and profitability without compromising the environment. Requiring high chemical inputs which accelerate soil systems’ biological activity, intensive agricultural production results in the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG; e.g., CO2, CH4, and N2O), important drivers of climate change. Quantifying emissions from agricultural soils is critical to assessing the sustainability of farming practices. Ignoring field heterogeneity, past estimates of agriculture-driven GHG emissions simply extrapolated totals from a small number of sampling sites. Inherent differences in soil climatic and physical properties and crop management activities can significantly affect an agricultural field’s spatial (transverse and depth-wise) and temporal patterns of GHG emissions.