DROCAM: Improving agricultural productivity, resilience, and soil health
The U.C. DroCaM (UC Drought and Carbon Management) project performs research to advance understanding of how agricultural practices, including carbon management and irrigation methods, will affect soil health, carbon emissions and sequestration, and soil microbiome properties. We use observations and experiments from the long-term sustainable agriculture program at the UCD Russell Ranch facility, and are establishing UC-Community research partnerships and field sites in southern California with local growers. The LBNL modeling group is working to develop mechanistic representations of agriculture using the ecosys model. We are evaluating the model with observations from the Russell Ranch facility, and using it to evaluate precision agriculture approaches, feedbacks between plants and soil health, and impacts of expected climate change.
