Sub-Project 4: Technology Transfer
|
Regional Water and Soil Assessment for Mapping Sustainable Agriculture |
|
Sub-Project 4: Technology Transfer
|
|
|
|
The Technology Transfer Sub-Project will initially involve working closely with the identified partner agencies to discuss the indicator technology with the relevant groups in China and Australia. Establishing the priority issues that require assessment at the sites in the two countries and the 'core' indicators that address them and are acceptable within the framework of the traditional practices is a fundamental step of the Project. This step must be made rigorously to provide a focus for the scientific developments. At the farm scale, technology transfer mechanisms and networks already exist to undertake this definition and later to promote the adoption of improved management practices through the Provincial Governments in China and local LandCare Groups in Australia. The primary contacts for the sites selected in China (Ma Zhanyuan, Hebei Province; Zhang Zhixiang, Ansai County, Shaanxi and Liu Wenlong, Changwu County, Shaanxi) are officers of the Chinese technology transfer network which has offices from Provincial level to Village level. They have been included among the project staff to facilitate this process and to help develop training courses at the experimental stations. In Australia, close liaison is being maintained with the LandCare Groups in the preparation and execution of the Project through the local LandCare Group and Combined LandCare
Group representatives (see Section 2.6).
The initial step is to jointly review and develop practical and easily applied local and regional measures of water balance components, water use efficiency and soil degradation as effective indicators that can be applied to farm and regional scales and address concerns of the regional managers. In the soil degradation work, for example, scientists from that Sub-Project will work with end users to define inexpensive indicators which reliably predict risk of waterlogging, salinisation and sodification and evaluate existing indicators of erosion. These indicators must be simple to use and capable of reliable interpretation. The selected indicators need to be validated and trialed with the target agricultural advisers and farming groups in both countries to ensure that recommended water and soil attributes (or their surrogates) are acceptable and relevant. This provides the tools for better farm management and property planning leading to higher and more sustainable production.
Farm-scale actions may translate to regionally unsustainable outcomes. Hence, in parallel with the development of effective farm scale indicators, the development of tools that the regional managers can use to assess the results of current practice are also being developed in this Project. These will allow regional managers to communicate necessary changes back to the farm scale and provide motivation for change. Accomplishing this will depend partly on good technology development and partly on effective technology transfer to regional agencies. In both countries, agencies which can provide this base exist and have been included in the development of the Project.
In line with the indicator methodology (Walker and Reuter, 1966), interaction with end users from the outset is essential. User acceptance and ease of use are key factors. It is intended to hold an indicators workshop in China to establish the local rankings and acceptance of proposed measures at an early stage of the project. The operational success of the program in both countries will be
reviewed with the involvement of the target groups of end users at the different scales of application.
Together with the partner regional groups, consult with farm leaders to establish the way the technical outputs can be related to current extension and farm practices. In particular, relate (or modify) the current indicator technology to the traditional practices of the target groups.
Encourage adoption of the indicator methodology with the partner regional groups and encourage regional agencies to adopt mapping and monitoring technology. Establish how to combine, for example, sustainable WUEI as measured and monitored regionally using GIS technology with the WUEI assessed at farm scale and its associated guidelines for improvement.
Develop extension and communication packages for the research findings calibrated to local conditions and undertake trials and communication activities. These should include manuals and locally tested and validated indicator kits which can operate at both farm and regional scales.
Year 1 (97/98) Progress - as extracted from the Annual Report
Technology transfer has been achieved within the project by joint meetings in China (Sept 1997) and technical workshops in China (Sept 1997). Community groups have been addressed e.g. Liverpool Plains (Stauffacher and Walker May 1998), Mt Lofty Ranges (Rob Fitzpatrick at the South Australian Dryland Salinity Forum in September) and Richard Merry, Jim Cox and Rob Fitzpatrick with field day workshops with Landcare Groups in March and May. These groups have had explanations about how their landscapes function and how indicators can be used for better management outcomes. Popular articles have been distributed especially in the Mt Lofty Ranges project, papers have been added to the scientific literature, and technical reports produced.
A web site has been established and includes a summary of the project, photos of sites, remotely sensed images, indicators text. All the publications will eventually appear on the site.
a. Consult and involve recipients
Zhang from SIAM visited the Canberra Lab each for 3 months. Renzhao Mao visited the Adelaide Lab for 6 months.
b. Workshops Organised
A four day WAVES workshop was held at CSIRO Land and Water in Canberra (18 -21 May 1998) to help those interested in using the model. Of interest to the ACIAR project Jim Cox (CSIRO Land and Water, Adelaide) and Tim McVicar (CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra) attended the course. There were other participants from several other agencies. As part of an ACIAR project, Jim works on some Mt Lofty Ranges catchments and is trying to understand the water balance and soil moisture dynamics under crops and pastures. Jim has a number of field sites in his catchments where he has measured soil properties, moisture contents, and groundwater depth. Tim, with expertise in remote sensing, is looking for linkages between WAVES and remotely sensed data for large-scale water balance applications as part of the ACIAR project.
Year 2 (98/99) Progress - as extracted from the Annual Report
The production of a booklet titled "A Guide to Environmental Indicators" (see ref 39. (CBR_04) is a major outcome. This involved staff from all research institutions during an intensive three week period in Canberra. The booklet introduces the concept of Environmental Indicators in a manner that is sensitive to the Chinese environment, and social / political situations. The booklet provides a background of Environmental Management in China, next Indicators (within the classical scientific approach) are introduced, several steps are outlined in more detail and finally relevant examples are provided.
Last year in Section 3.4 Budget Discussion we reported that "in the final year of the project, when technology transfer is the focus it would be very useful if extra funding from ACIAR allowed both a hardcopy publication of a Chinese Indicators Book and a Project Summary CD ROM, in both English and Chinese languages to be produced". We now have first hand experience in production of technology transfer material in Chinese. Based on this we conclude that CSIRO scientist will concentrate primarily on producing English outputs, while CAS scientists will concentrate on Chinese outputs. Where appropriate, scientists from both countries will publish material in the International per reviewed scientific literature.
A CSIRO Land and Water project information sheet has been produced (see ref: 38: CBR_03). This is a popular article and presents the ACIAR project in a manner that other scientists, decision makers and members of the general public can understand. Specific to the Soil Process Task several other information leaflets have also been produced. These provide explanations of landscapes function where inland acid sulphate conditions can and may be experienced and suggest indicators can be used for better management outcomes (see refs: 33: ADL_05; 20: ADL_04).
A major effort was undertaken to upgrade the WEB site. This has allowed project staff to easily send e-mails to each other and the results from the project, to date, are more organised for external visitors to the WWW site.
A primary focus of this Technology Transfer sub-task has been to provide Landcare groups and scientists with the best soil indicators for monitoring the condition of catchments. This was tackled in three ways, namely:
The above products provide significant outcomes from this project, which involved close collaboration between staff in CSIRO Land and Water, Primary Industries and Resources, South Australia and Landcare Groups.
Two WAVES workshops were held in October 1998 with a total 26 participants, one in Shijiazhuang and the other at Yangling. They successfully helped users from China to understand the WAVES model and to test and use the model with their own data. Possible outcomes of the workshop were: (1) calibrated model with data from Changwu and Luancheng; and (2) comparison of WAVES with local water balance model in the context of dryland and irrigated agriculture. These outcomes will be evaluated by the CSIRO Water Balance Task Leader (Lu Zhang) during a visit to China in the near future.
A Spatial Information Systems workshop was successfully conducted at Yangling in October 1998, with a total of 10 participants. The workshop assisted the ISWC Spatial Information Systems staff to understand the temporal and spatial interactions of remote sensing, GIS and process understanding. During the workshop current methods and ideas for how process understanding can be interpolated in a spatial and temporal domain, using spatial information systems, were discussed. The requirement for suitable software to develop an accurate DEM for the entire Loess Plateau was
A Soil Process workshop was held in Adelaide between visiting Chinese scientists (Drs Hu and Liu) and relevant staff from CLW, Adelaide in July. Staff participated in several field and laboratory activities and held discussions as a basis for cross transfer of information. Topics discussed included:
Year 3 (99/00) Progress - as extracted from the Annual Report
The two groups in China have been both very active in the technology transfer area. Through the experimental stations they have been able to discuss research outcomes with local farmers. In SIAM they have also focussed on pathways which technology transfer can follow (SIAM_10). There have been two papers published on the use of indicators for technology transfer to local farmers in the saline soils areas of the eastern NCP (SIAM_09 and SIAM_11). In ISWC in Yangling it is acknowledged that environmental conservation measures must be implemented within economic and social conditions, refer to ISWC_01 to ISWC_03. The scientists are now influencing the land use planning and regional development decision making processes.
In Canberra Dr Joe Walker has also been influencing the decision making processes at a National Level. In addition to performing this task the influence of landscape age and evolution has been discussed in the context of landscape health. This introduces the idea that landscape health needs to be assessed differently for different parts of the landscape, given the stage of landscape evolution (CBR_06).
Staff in Adelaide led several publicly advertised field trips. On 10th April, 2000 about 45 delegates attended the mid-conference full day field trip of the 17th Biennial Australian clay minerals conference (ADL_11, ADL_12). On 11th April 2000, about 30 farmers, state agriculture extension staff and final year students from the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at Adelaide University attended a field day in the Keynes Catchment in the Mt Lofty Ranges. The benefits from sowing perennial pasture species in the region were discussed, in terms of increased water usage and farm productivity (ADL_22). On 3rd August 1999 staff assisted in running a field trip and workshop on dryland salinity on Eyre Peninsula for the State Dryland Salinity committee. About 40 farmers and state agriculture extension staff attended and during the workshop radio interviews were given. Following the workshop a newspaper article was published for Landcare groups (ADL_24).
Staff presented papers at several publicly advertised symposia, seminars and national conferences. A paper was presented on 11th November 1999 entitled “Pedogenic processes: their impact on soil and water quality” at the Australian Academy of Science symposium entitled “Fixing the foundations - the role of soil science in solving Australia’s crisis in land and water management.” ((ADL_24). A seminar was presented on 9th March, 2000 entitled “Why soils knowledge is important in telecommunications, water quality, mining, and greenhouse gas emissions” at the Royal Society of South Australia Inc (ADL_25). A seminar was presented in Adelaide on 1st March 2000 entitled ”Where do Acid Sulfate Soils exist and why they cost us millions of dollars?” (ADL_27; ADL_26).
Year 4 (00/01) Progress - as extracted from the Annual Report
Please direct research and general email enquiries to
Joe Walker in Australia and Liu Guobin (ISWC) or Hu Chunsheng (SIAM) in China
Last updated 7 May 1999 communicator@eoc.csiro.au
Copyright 1998, CSIRO Australia
Use of this web site and information available from it
is subject to one or more of the following legal notices
CSIRO Legal Notice and Disclaimer