Healthy soil lies at the heart of successful farming

Project Award Summary

Colorado State University's Sponsored Programs division received a $957,085 Project Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) under the Open Data Standards program (CFDA 10.233), awarded September 30, 2025, with completion scheduled for September 29, 2027. The award funds TerraSCOPE, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven soil health modeling system designed to integrate grower-reported data with scientific simulations. The platform will enable agricultural producers, researchers, and professionals to make evidence-based decisions regarding soil management by modeling how soil conditions change over time and how farming practices affect soil health outcomes.

The core deliverable is a practical data framework that translates diverse, inconsistent agricultural data into actionable insights while addressing the technical challenge of harmonizing data across multiple formats and collection methodologies. TerraSCOPE incorporates machine learning models that improve as additional grower data becomes available, enabling users to explore future soil health scenarios. Development is conducted collaboratively with Colorado agricultural communities, guided by a multidisciplinary team including soil scientists, outreach specialists, and a sociologist with established ties to regional farming operations. The system is designed to function as a bridge between scientific understanding and farm-level decision-making, prioritizing farmer feedback and platform refinement throughout the project lifecycle to ensure practical utility and community trust.

When the soils are in good health, IT holds water, lets roots grow, and helps recycle the nutrients that plants need. This project, called terrascope, aims to give growers, researchers, and agricultural professionals better tools to understand how soil changes over time and how different choices affect its health. We design a modeling system that integrates data reported by growers with scientific simulations, enabling informed decisions supported by evidence and practical experience. Terrascope harnesses novel artificial intelligence (AI) methods to power the data framework so that IT learns from real-world grower data. These AI models help uncover patterns that would be difficult to detect otherwise, allowing users to explore future outcomes relating to soil health. The system adjusts and improves as more information becomes available, making IT smarter and more useful over time. One of the biggest challenges in this work is that data comes in many forms: different formats, levels of detail, and collection methods. Terrascope is designed to handle this diversity, translating complex and sometimes inconsistent information into clear, usable insight.central to this effort is the tenet that the system must be built not just for the community but with the community. The platform will be developed in close collaboration with growers, guided by a team that includes soil scientists, outreach specialists, and a sociologist all of whom have deep, established ties to agricultural communities in colorado. Over the course of the project, we will listen to farmers' needs, test and refine the platform based on their feedback, and ensure that the system remains practical and trustworthy.terrascope is designed to be more than a repository for data. IT will serve as a practical bridge between scientific understanding and day-to-day decision-making. IT is designed to help growers manage their soil with confidence, knowing that the information they see is rooted in evidence and responsive to their realities. The strength of this project comes from its foundation: (1) a set of long-standing partnerships, (2) a deep commitment to working across disciplines, and (3) years of experience building tools that turn complex data into clear, actionable insight.