Sustainability

Bodenverdichtung

How does compacted soil recover?

It takes mere seconds to compact a soil, but years or even decades for it to recover. Biological activities by plant roots and soil organisms (earthworms) as well as physical effects like drying out and rewetting phases, and freezing-thawing cycles are vital for natural regeneration. Exactly how recovery happens is being investigated in a long-term field trial. For this, an observational infrastructure with hundreds of soil probes – the Soil Structure Observatory (SSO) – was set up in 2014 together with ETH Zurich. After the initial compaction event, a fallow, a permanent grassland and a crop rotation with and without tillage were set up. This allows to analyse e.g. the influence of plants and tillage on recovery.

Bodenfruchtbarkeit und Bodenschutz
SoilStructureObservatory

Regeneration verdichteter Böden


Publikation Arbeitshaltung Melken

Ergonomics in the milking parlour

Milkers frequently suffer from musculoskeletal disorders, especially in the area of the shoulders and arms.  Agroscope therefore investigated whether appropriate working heights can reduce workload in the milking parlour. For this, the angle of flexion of various joints during milking was recorded in one experiment, whilst a second experiment recorded muscle contractions at three different heights. The study showed that although a lower working height in the milking parlour has no effect on forearms or upper arms, it significantly reduces strain on the shoulders. 

Hassan-Roland Nasser

Picture


Dr. Ing.

Forschungsgruppe

  • 22.00.20.04 Digitale Produktion

Hassan-Roland Nasser

Agroscope
Rte de la Tioleyre 4
1725 Posieux
Schweiz

Tel. +41 58 48 39572

Standort Posieux

Hassan-Roland Nasser

Weitere Informationen

I work as a data scientist in the digital production group and I am part of the DataDrive team. I am involved in several project and I am managing the computer vision coordination project (a SFF11 subprojet).

Data science contains a broad spectrum of activities and it is a challenging field, not only because it comes at the interface of computer science and math, but also because:

  • There are a lot of available tools in the market.
  • Working in data science involves having some domain knowledge (often different than our domain knowledge of comfort)
  • The reproducibility and generalizability of created systems and models

My main function is to mitigate these difficulties in a research context by contributing to data and machine learning aspects in the projects I am contributing to. Here are few examples of the projects I am working on:

  • Computer vision coordination project: enable and foster computer vision based projects at agroscope by supporting CV based projects and organizing regular meetings and workshops about the topic.
  • Rumex detection using computer vision: in this project, I work on the modelling and the system architecture.
  • Smart irrigation using dendrometers signals over LoraWAN: in this project, I work on signal and data analysis and on implementing the backend routine for automation.
  • Rhythmicity as welfare indicators for ruminants: I develop algorithms (in the context of the DigiRhythm package) and analyze data.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=L97ZODwAAAAJ&hl=en

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1821-3234

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nasserha

DigiRhythm Libray: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/digiRhythm/index.html

Smart weed control: https://www.agroscope.admin.ch/agroscope/en/home/topics/economics-technology/smart-farming/smart-weed-control.html 

Rinder Fuetterung

Optimised feed reduces environmental impacts

On behalf of Micarna SA, Agroscope analysed the environmental impacts of beef, pork and poultry production. With beef production, feed intensity was crucial. In the case of pork and poultry production, the quantity of feed used per kg of meat had the greatest influence on environmental impacts. The use of European soya with its shorter transport distances had a positive effect.