Soil Health Nexus
The North Central Region Soil Health Nexus was initiated in 2015 with funding from the North Central Region Water Network. A North Central Soil Health Work Group with representatives from Land Grant Universities across the 12 state region convened to address the challenges of increasing access to soil health research, knowledge, extension and resources. A regional structure was initiated around the three areas of Research, Extension and Outreach, and Resources and Communications. The Nexus/MaSH interactive website serves the communication conduit for each area.
Goals
- Maintain and grow our inventory of soil health research, training, and educational resources.
- Produce regional publications, videos, webinars, and blogs relevant to soil health and manure research and management practices.
- Develop regional research projects to promote conservation systems and practices such as cover crops, and no-till technologies that will lead to the improvement of soil and water quality in the region.
- Form a research and education technical committee that will serve as a regional infrastructure for future development of new science in the area of soil health and manure management.
- Continuing to grow participation among land—grant researchers, Extension staff and educators, and other partners to ensure access to locally relevant soil health and manure information across the North Central Region.
- Build capacity in each state’s Land Grant system to deliver soil health training, research, and resources.
The Team
Christina Curell
Christina is a statewide cover crops and soil health educator serving all agricultural commodities. Her mission is to assist all farmers throughout Michigan increase their farm’s environmental and production sustainability focusing on soil health and inclusion of cover crops into their cropping system.
Leslie Johnson
Leslie is the Animal Manure Management Extension Educator at the University of Nebraska. Her role includes facilitating article development for manure.unl.edu. She also manages the online manure course and annual manure trainings across the state of Nebraska, as well as other manure programming in the state. Leslie serves as the webinar coordinator for the Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Community (https://lpelc.org) and on the leadership team for the Soil Health Nexus
Walt Sell
As the ANR Assistant Program Leader for Soil Health at Purdue University Extension, Walt has a dedicated focus on Extension educational efforts in soil health, water quality and nutrient management. He work closely with County Extension Educators and campus faculty and specialists to transfer results of groundbreaking research to real world applications for farmers and agribusiness personnel. Walt also work to build on Extension’s participation and representation in the Indiana Conservation Partnership to address issues on soil health, water quality and nutrient management.