Category: Articles in English
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Agriculture and COP28 in Dubai
Dubai hosted the COP28 in early December 2023. Ironically, the rich city which relies heavily on oil and gas, with no sign of solar panels, produced a fossil fuel phase-out agreement. The agreement commits countries to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, to achieve net-zero emissions…
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Peat in the tropics
Traditionally, up to early 20th Century, scientists do not believe that peat can occur in tropical regions, as the high temperature means decomposition will be faster than organic matter production. Plant geographers said that peat cannot form in tropical environment below an elevation of 1100 m. Even ECJ Mohr in his 1920 book “The Soil of Java and Sumatra” stated that peat could…
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Helicopter Peat Research
A bibliometric study on peatland just been published in Mires and Peat: The ecosystem of peatland research: a bibliometric analysis by van Bellen and Larivière. The authors looked at scientific papers on peatland published between 1991 and 2017. They found that ” become increasingly international and diversified, with more countries and study sites active, and an increase in foreign…
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Jan Henri Druif (1893-1970)
Jan Henri Druif was a Dutch pedologist known for his work on the mineral investigation of soils in Deli, Sumatra. Druif was born in 1893, in Rotterdam. His education included the Wageningen Agricultural College, the Technical College at Delft, Utrecht University (PhD), and Hanover Technical College (Germany). He graduated his PhD in 1927 at Utrecht…
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Van Bemmelen and the Soil for Tobacco in Deli
Jakob Marteen Van Bemmelen (1830-1911) was a chemist from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He is known in soil science for the van Bemmelen factor, a conversion factor for soil organic matter to carbon: Soil OM = 1.724 * Soil OC. The publication that refers to this factor is: Van Bemmelen, J.M., 1890. Über die Bestimmung des Wassers,…
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Pill testing… Why not use it for Soil Testing?
The instrument behind pill testing combined with artificial intelligence can be used accurately for soil testing The trial for pill testing at festivals in Australia is still being debated. The test was meant to examine the quality of drugs in just minutes. The technology behind accurate pill testing is the Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy….
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Soil 4.0 and Digital Agriculture in South East Asia
A digital revolution is taking hold in SE Asia, and it is not limited to having a smartphone and focused on digital natives but is touted as the next big industrial revolution to rival that of the west. It is globally called the Industry Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) and is promoted in SE Asian countries as…
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Toba Highland Peat
Toba highland peatland is unique in the tropics, it is extensive, with an age of 20,000 – 30,000 years. It is the largest carbon store on land, holds records of our past vegetation, climate and human activities. This peatland is currently being used for agriculture, mined and left degraded. The drained peat causes high C emission to the atmosphere,…
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Digital Peatland Mapping in Indonesia
Open Digital Mapping methodology is a cost-effective and science-based method for mapping peatlands in Indonesia. Peatlands in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua have been mapped using field survey data combined with free remote sensing data and machine learning methods. We recently published a critical review on digital mapping of peatland. We recommend that peatland is better…
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Mapping Rice and Its Growth Stages
We wanted to map rice fields and their growth stages using satellites Why? Over half the global population eats rice. Knowing how much rice is planted, and where it is planted, helps manage food security. We can know in advance if there’s going to be a rice shortage. At the moment, time-consuming and expensive field…