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Soil Organic Carbon

Soil organic carbon refers to the amount of carbon that is present in organic matter within soil. This organic matter can come from a variety of sources, including plant and animal residues, microorganisms, and other living organisms. Soil organic carbon is important for maintaining the health and productivity of soil, as well as for reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Soil organic carbon (SOC) is is an excellent indicator of soil health and fertility and is often used as an indirect measurement of soil organic matter (SOM). High SOM/SOC content provides nutrients to plants and improves water availability, both of which enhance soil fertility and ultimately improve crop productivity.

The Vultus soil organic carbon (SOC) analysis is based on a 0-10 cm soil depth in measures of g/kg of carbon at a 10 meter resolution. The model uses AI neural networks to process soil-organic-carbon over a 13-month period and then returns a single image that represents SOC for that period.

Usage

The processSoilOrganicCarbon() mutation is used to generate a soil organic carbon analyses. The service takes an "as-of" date parameter that represents the end of the 13-month period to be processed. The required arguments for generating an analysis are:

  • polygonId
  • leadingUpToDate

The retrieveSoilOrganicCarbon() query is used to retrieve soil organic carbon analyses. When retrieving the new SOC analyses, the query accepts start and end date parameters. The query will retrieve all SOC maps generated with "as-of" dates between the start and end dates provided. The required arguments for retrieving analyses are:

  • polygonId
  • startDate
  • endDate


mutation {
  processSoilOrganicCarbon(
    polygonId: "[YOUR POLYGON ID GOES HERE]"
    leadingUpToDate: "2023-05-01"
  )
  {
    IsSuccess
    Message
    Status
    Result {
      requestId
    }
  }
}

A successful request returns:

  • status information about the request,
  • a system generated requestId, and
  • other polygon information as requested by the user


query {
  retrieveSoilOrganicCarbon(
    polygonId: "[YOUR POLYGON ID GOES HERE]"
    startDate: "2022-01-01"
    endDate: "2023-05-25"
  )
  {
    IsSuccess
    Message
    Status
    Result {
      colorlegend
      png
      tif
      json
    }
  }
}

Please refer to the Schema Documentation in the API Playground for more information.

Limitations

The SOC service requires that polygon has bare soil (no vegetaion present) at some point during the 13-month analysis period. The model uses low NDVI values to determine bare soil versus vegetation. If the service is unable to find non-clouded images with bare soil, the service request status will be marked as "clouded" or "no data".

Soil organic carbon values can vary significantly between fields. Becasue of this, the colors used in the .PNG files for a single field might not show much variation.