The 2019 Team Challenge

Note: A subset of the original student team currently continue working on this as a passion-project in parallel to their PhD studies. Their next step is to as mentors for a Development i-Teams project. Find out more here.

Soil health matters

With access to soil health data, we aim to empower communities with the tools and knowledge to improve agricultural land management and to engage more citizen scientists.

Our mission here at SoliCamb is to provide a low-cost sensing platform to provide data on soil nutrients and water retention.

Sensing concerns

Moisture Retention

We are developing a field sensor implementing a cost-effective, simplified approach to produce an estimate of the water retention capacity of the soil.

Nutrients

With the exciting technologies we are developing, we can provide reliable measurements of nutrients in the soil to scientifically guide the fertilising of plants.

Soil Organic Content

There is a significant correlation between SOC and soil fertility. Residues of plants and animals will be decomposed by microorganism. This process turns matters from organic to inorganic, which can then be absorbed by plants as essential nutrients. It is of great importance to understand SOC when looking to improve soil health.

Outreach and citizen engagement

Public engagement is fundamental for increasing awareness, education and empowerment within the local community. We frequently run events and workshops aimed to  engage a range of community groups of all ages- please check our homepage for further details or get in touch via our contacts page.

The team

The team consist of 15 students with backgrounds in physics, engineering, biotechnology and chemistry.

For more information see https://www.solicamb.co.uk/.