LandPKS App – Smartphone Application for Land Characterization

The Snapp Learning Lab is working in collaboration with the LandPKS project on development and implementation of the LandPKS app on agricultural land in Tanzania, Malawi and Niger. LandPKS is an open-source project aiming to improve sustainable land management through a mobile phone application that captures local user input into a cloud database system. The application currently consists of two modules, LandInfo for soil characterization and LandCover for vegetation monitoring. Through these modules the user inputs site information and is provided output on the physical characteristics of that site. The Snapp Learning Lab team is currently utilizing the LandInfo module for characterization of agricultural land in our target research sites. This app allows for collecting site information such as soil texture by depth, soil color, and soil limitations that provide a deeper understanding of the management potential of agricultural land. The output provided by the app predicts soil infiltration and plant available water-holding capacity, summarizes soil properties by depth, and pulls site-specific climate information from remote sensing databases. Our research community is building on this app to identify additional information that may be collected through this platform to enhance the site characterization outputs provided to users and applicability in improving agricultural management. As access to smartphones increases worldwide, particularly in developing countries, mobile phone technology will be an important tool in addressing the challenges of smallholder farmers. By strengthening the usability and usefulness of tools such as LandPKS, farmers will be provided with improved information and space for their own input to share their knowledge of current agricultural land conditions. This will provide valuable information to farmers, researchers, and policymakers on the status of agricultural land and identify areas of limitation and improvement for land management.

Learn more about the LandPKS Project

Find the open access data portal here.