A Sustainable Future for the Saskatchewan Soil Information System (SKSIS)

Term: 3 years
Status: Ongoing
Researcher(s): Angela Bedard-Haughn, Jeremy Kiss, Preston Sorenson, U of S
SaskOilseeds Investment: $22,667
Total Project Cost: $378,372
Funding Partners: ADF, SPG, Sask Wheat

Objective

1. Websites in general, but software-as-a-service applications in particular, require ongoing maintenance to remain operational and stable. This requires personnel to handle potential technical issues, ensure system security, and keep the platform up to date with evolving browser and server requirements. Ensuring the long-term sustainability of SKSIS and SKSIS Mapper requires oversight for these purposes.

2. As new data layers become available and new mapping and modelling approaches are developed, SKSIS and SKSIS Mapper will require updates and upgrades to incorporate new data and features into the platform, on both the front end (maps and features that make sense to users) and back end (data design and programming).

3. To continue to grow the SKSIS and SKSIS Mapper user base and to ensure our current users are aware of new features and capabilities, we will provide annual training workshops as well as participate in exhibitions and conferences. Additionally, personnel will be made available to handle user support requests to ensure that the platform is accessible, understandable, and usable to those seeking its services.

4. Although currently operating as a free service, there is potential to generate funds to support the SKSIS project through monetization of the SKSIS Mapper service platform. The ability for SKSIS Mapper to contribute funding to the SKSIS project will be assessed over the course of this project.

Project Description

SKSIS launched in 2018 with the goal of making quality soil information accessible to Saskatchewan producers, agrologists, researchers, land managers, and policy makers.

Rather than generating new information, the original goal of SKSIS was to provide a home to an exceptional source of information: the Saskatchewan soil survey. The Saskatchewan soil survey was a considerable undertaking that spanned several decades (1950s – 1990s) and required extensive financial input and labour to execute. As a result of that investment, Saskatchewan now benefits from an extensive and powerful dataset that has coverage for the entirety of Saskatchewan’s agricultural region. However, prior to the launch of SKSIS.ca, this dataset was only available either as hard copy paper maps or as a digital database downloadable through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s National Soil Database (2024). Use of that database requires technical expertise with geographic information systems, which makes it inaccessible to many potential users. The SKSIS team expanded on this database and developed SKSIS.ca to make this information and other existing soil and environmental datasets accessible and explorable through an intuitive interactive web map.

Since its launch in 2018, the SKSIS team has consistently received feedback from users that SKSIS.ca is highly valuable to them. The user base spans many professions and organizations including farmers, agrologists, researchers, environmental consultants, land managers, land appraisers, First Nations groups, and the Ministry of Agriculture, among others. As the late legendary Professor Les Henry put it, “SKSIS is the best thing since sliced bread”. The continuation of this project ensures that we continue to bridge the gap between people and quality soil information for our province.

Although the Saskatchewan soil survey provides complete coverage of soil information for the agricultural region of Saskatchewan, there is room to improve the quality and, more specifically, the resolution of the information. The Saskatchewan soil survey typically produced maps at 1:100,000 or 1:250,000 scale, where individual soil map polygon delineations often cover extensive areas up to multiple sections of land.

The purpose of this dataset was to provide a description of the general soil characteristics for an area rather than attempt to map soils at a high enough resolution to allow interpretation of soil variability within a field. The SKSIS Mapper predictive soil mapping service was launched in March 2024 with the goal of providing a means to generate higher resolution soil information for Saskatchewan agricultural landscapes. SKSIS Mapper is a web platform, where users can upload soil and environmental data collected from their fields to generate detailed maps of various soil properties across their land. The resulting high-resolution maps provide insight on how soils vary across their fields and can be used to inform precision agricultural management for those fields. SKSIS Mapper also provides a tool that generates recommended sampling designs for the user’s target fields, which can be used to support predictive soil mapping (PSM) or standard agronomic soil testing. The tools provided through SKSIS Mapper are based on methods of geostatistical and machine-learning modelling that have been established over the past 30 years of international research in predictive digital soil mapping. Our lab group has conducted several research projects on adapting these methods to work in Saskatchewan landscapes. This platform is a means to make these methodologies accessible to Saskatchewan agronomists, producers, and others to be put to practical use to support Saskatchewan agriculture.