Tours and Events

Taking People to the Soil and Bringing Soil to the People

Through various pre-, post-, and in-congress tours, we will bring interested attendees to many of Canada’s soils, and we will bring all these soils to all attendees! Our tours will range from one-day to multi-day formats, both within driving distances of Toronto, as well as departing from selected hubs in other regions of the country. Each tour will examine natural and managed ecosystems through the lens of our congress theme “Soils in a Warmer World”. In support of the tours, various complementary material, including pre-recorded videos, geospatial data and interpretive reports will be developed. This material will be made available through a dedicated website, as well as from on-board servers accessible by tour participants using their smart devices. Where local rural highspeed internet permits, real-time streaming of infield activities will facilitate virtual participation. All material developed for the tours, as well as audio-visual materials captured during the tours, will be curated, and made available through appropriate platforms (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo), for ongoing education purposes.

2030 International Soil Judging Contest

An International Soil Judging Contest would be held during the pre-congress week, based at the University of Guelph, located 90 km to the west of Toronto. Landscapes in the Guelph region are dominated by a range of Wisconsinan glacial parent materials overlying Paleozoic dolomitic bedrock. The many terrain features in the area are associated with glacial oscillations, meltwater processes, and subsequent reworking of tills, and loess, resulting in undulating and sometimes drumlinized, landforms with a range of hydrological features. A special emphasis of the soil judging contest would be on the interpretation of the potential effects of climate change, on soil forming factors and processes in the soils being described, as well as the implications for management.