Project Grant 20236702138977

The University of Nebraska received a three-year, $990,697 Project Grant from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive federal grants program. The grant funds the development of multi-agent unmanned aircraft systems and accompanying machine learning models to automate the monitoring, reporting, and verification of soil water content and soil organic content. Specifically, the university will build tethered unmanned aircraft to conduct persistent atmospheric monitoring and sampling unmanned aircraft equipped with sensor probes to extract and collect soil samples. Algorithms will integrate data from the unmanned aircraft systems to provide accurate, high-resolution spatial and temporal soil water content and soil organic content data to stakeholders to inform timely agricultural, sequestration, and water management decisions. The publicly available data aims to impact watering and sequestration decisions throughout growing seasons.