Explore Morley SAMS

Introducing Morley SAMS

The Morley Soil and Agronomic Monitoring Study (SAMS) is one of our most interesting pieces of research through our Morley Science.

Morley SAMS, which began in 2018, is a long term on-farm monitoring programme that aims to link soil health and its impacts on yield, profitability, and resilience. We anticipate the this long-term monitoring will continue for decades to come.

Our sites

A network of monitoring sites, a mixture of historic high, low and variable yielding areas and 4 headland sites, have been chosen across the farm.

The first step was to use GIS to synthesise the yield data to examine patterns and link these to known patterns of soil variation. Each site is approximately 150 m², and there is the potential to add more sites in later phases of the programme.

The data

We have collated a selection of the Morley SAMS data into an interactive map. The maps can be used to view details of the farm soils, pH, earthworm count, VESS, and aggregate stability.

Need some help?

To help use the interactive map we have also put together a couple of “how to” tips which can be found below the map.

How to use the map

This web map allows you to explore more SAMS soil properties and spatial data sets.

To compare soil properties, select a property from the left hand side and click “Apply” to view all sites. The scroll bar down the left hand side allows you to view all SAM’s sites, or select those in just one field. If you want to only view the sites that you are zoomed in on select the “Use spatial filter to limit features” button.

In the top left hand corner of the map you can select the layers you want to view, such as elevation data or soils map. You can also use the slider function to compare spatial data sets, such as how elevation and soil type changes.

References

• Soils map courtesy of LandIS data archive
• Elevation data from DEFRA LIDAR Composite DTM 2017
• Web map application supported by Cranfield University as part of a CENTA funded PhD using the Morley SAMS data set

In partnership

NIAB and others are contributing to Morley SAMS. The detailed soil physical characterisation is being carried out in partnership with the James Hutton Institute. All sites in cereals, oilseed rape and pulses are also entered into ADAS Yield Enhancement Network (YEN). This provides modelled potential yield and supports SAMS to carry out comprehensive grain and plant tissue nutrient analysis across all sites.

We expect that over the life of the project, and well beyond, the Morley SAMS project and data sets will be used by other organisations, researchers, and farmers as a platform for exploring the interactions between crops, soils, weather and agricultural management to help underpin sustainable agriculture in East Anglia for generations to come. As the data set grows over the years, so will the opportunity to make more interesting and complex observations.

As TMAF is a charity, all the SAMS information is openly available. TMAF would like to hear from any organisation who may wish to offer support and work collaboratively.

You can read a more detailed summary of Morley SAMS in our TMAF news item Explaining the Morley Soil and Agronomic Study.