SoiLiNQ - News & Events by SeanSoiLiNQ - News & Events by Seanhttp://soilinq-test.zohosites.ca/news_and_events/author/seanThu, 09 Apr 2026 22:29:13 -0400http://zoho.com/sites/<![CDATA[Fertilizer Runoff Costs Us All]]>http://soilinq-test.zohosites.ca/news_and_events/post/too-much-of-a-good-thingOver-fertilization wastes resources and contaminates water supplies. Learn how environmental monitoring, including soil monitoring, helps farmers, landscapers, and city managers reduce fertilizer runoff and lower costs.]]>

Over-Fertilization: The Hidden Cost of Fertilizer Runoff for Farms, Landscapes, and Cities

 Why Over-Fertilizing Happens

Applying fertilizers to get better results seems like a no-brainer.

Farmers, Landscapers, and City Managers alike look to fertilizers to meet aesthetic demands and maximize growth. But over-application creates an invisible problem: The extra fertilizer gets carried into our water supply by rainfall and irrigation.

Effects We Do and Don't See

Fertilizer runoff is hard to detect because it builds slowly, meaning it usually escapes notice until it’s already large, time consuming, and expensive to clean up.


It's also dangerous.

We pay the costs on both sides:
    1. Inefficient fertilizer usage (costs on the way in)

    2. Contamination cleanups (costs on the way out)

Precise Resource Management Matters

The underlying issue is a lack of visibility into whether soil nutrients are at optimal levels or excessive amounts have been applied. Creating that visibility can minimize or remove many of these issues. This is just one benefit of data-driven green management, using environmental sensors to reduce water waste and over-fertilization, making human efforts more effective.


Farmers are starting to use this technology to monitor changes in soil conditions, watering and applying inputs (like water and nutrients) only when necessary.  This results in reduced runoff, healthier crops, and lowered costs.


These same ideas could easily be applied directly to cities and landscapes. By integrating sensor networks into city parks, street landscaping (like medians), and other green infrastructure city managers can gain visibility into what's happening beneath the surface.


Easily available continuous data would transform urban landscaping and green space management from a guessing game into an evidence-based practice. 

It would improve city-wide maintenance practices, and give municipalities a powerful tool to reduce pollution - all without sacrificing the beauty and function of urban green spaces.

From Farms to Cites: A Connected Solution

Ultimately, it won't just be data and visibility that make these issues manageable at scale. We need connected systems that can work closely with human beings to help us manage all of our resources, including our time, better.



Ginkgo is trying to imagine what that world would look like and make it real.


That's the path we've put ourselves on at SoiLiNQ.



See how SoiLiNQ gives you real-time visibility

Book a Demo
]]>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:36:27 +0000<![CDATA[Urban Heat Islands are a Big Deal]]>http://soilinq-test.zohosites.ca/news_and_events/post/urban-heat-islands-are-a-big-dealBeing too hot for too long is bad for us. Urban heat islands make this worse, and cost us more. Urban Green Spaces help, but they can be expensive unless they're managed intelligently. SoiLiNQ is leading the way.]]>

Too hot, for too long?
It's ​worse for your health than you might realize.

Maintaining cooler urban temperatures is essential for protecting the public
from high energy costs, poor air quality, and heat-related illness.

Why Cities Are Getting Hotter

As population density rises, so does the concentration of heat generated by buildings, vehicles, and human activity. 


By 2050, 68% of the global population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050, meaning that more than 2/3rds of the heat we generate will come from concentrated areas - “Urban Heat Islands” (UHI).

The Science: Why Concrete Traps Warmth

Cities are filled with heat absorbing surfaces like concrete, asphalt, steel, and so on. These materials don't reflect light energy (the have low 'albedo'). Instead, they absorb lots of heat energy and hold it, releasing it slowly - and consistently - long after the sun has gone down.

Cool Cities cost less than Hot Cities

One of the most effective ways to combat UHI is through 'green infrastructure.' Soils and plants play a critical role, helping reverse the effects of UHIs by acting as natural air conditioners, and air filters:

  • They capture and filter out harmful air pollution
  • They cool us off by releasing water vapor from the pores in their leaves
  • They absorb solar radiation, and provide shade


Bottom line: We breathe easier, and spend less on air conditioning.


Economic & Health Impacts

The UHI effect isn't just a comfort issue or environmental hurdle - they're a drain on city and provincial budgets. 


UHI's increase cooling demands and energy costs. The unending heat they create directly contributes to respiratory issues and heat-related illnesses among vulnerable populations.

Challenges in Maintaining Urban Green Spaces

Urban Green Spaces are amazingly effective at counteracting UHIs, but they don't come cheap. Green spaces need water, human labour, fertilizer, and more to keep them functioning. These needs often outpace available resources - they wither, die, and must be replaced at even greater expense.

Protecting ROI with Climate Intelligence

Extreme heat doesn't just affect people; it buckles pavement and stresses power grids. 

Maintaining a 'cool' city through well managed green spaces like parks, gardens, and other arboreal spaces extends the lifespan of our roads, homes, and places of work, deferring millions in maintenance costs. 

That's real Return on Investment.

Data-Backed Resilience for Smart Cities

Continuous soil monitoring makes keeping Green Spaces alive and functioning much cheaper and easier.  When municipal managers know where water, fertilizer, and other labour is needed, resources aren't wasted. 


SoiLiNQ is here to help: SoiLiNQ helps managers optimize water usage, reduce manual workload, and ensure that urban greenery remains healthy, even when money is tight. 


That directly translates to cooler, healthier living for us all.


Ultimately, urban green spaces are more than just aesthetic additions - they are essential infrastructure for sustainable cities.  By combining nature-based solutions with smart technologies, cities can better combat rising temperatures, improve public health, and create more resilient communities.  As urban populations continue to grow, investing in the health and maintenance of green spaces will be key to ensuring that cities remain not only functional, but also liveable for future generations.

Sources
https://www.sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780121764807/encyclopedia-of-energy

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.870403/full

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/why-we-need-green-spaces-in-cities.html

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-heat-and-healthhttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11390756/

]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:52:51 +0000<![CDATA[The Soil Compaction Problem]]>http://soilinq-test.zohosites.ca/news_and_events/post/soil-compaction-problemLike water on a brick instead of a sponge, compacted soil prevents water from infiltrating soil and helping plants thrive. SoiLiNQ can help.]]>

Why Your Water Bill is High, But Your Plants are Still Thirsty

If you’ve ever seen water from an irrigation system collect in pools or flow into a channel while plants around it look wilted and dry, there’s likely a deeper (and possibly expensive) problem: overly compacted soil.

Soil can act more like a sponge, or more like a brick depending on soil compaction. 

When you pour water over the sponge, it absorbs the liquid instantly, holding it for future use. Soil that holds water nicely is a lot healthier, more profitable to use, and cheaper to maintain.

On the other hand, water poured over a brick just runs off. This creates a harmful cycle: stressed plants wilt and yellow, which looks like drought, so owners give them even more water, leading to further root damage, wasted water, and dry looking plants. 


That cycle hides waste and drives costs: water, fertilizer, maintenance costs all go up - plant quality and yields come down. 

The Root Restriction Problem

Plants tend to need looser soil to grow deep and wide root systems. Plant roots in overly compacted soil are forced to stay shallow - they cannot grow properly, and rely on surface moisture.


These dry out within hours on hot days, requiring more water just to survive, let alone thrive. In contrast, deep-rooted plants access water stored deeper in the soil and can go days without irrigation, driving costs down and improving plant life.

Knowing what to fix is the Hard Part

Overly compacted soil isn’t difficult or expensive to rehabilitate, but discovering the problem can be costly. 

Soil can change its compaction level over time, without your knowledge. Watching it carefully can be time consuming and expensive.

SoiLiNQ is here to help.


Seeing the Invisible with Data

Technologies like SoiLiNQ help remove the guesswork by collecting and analyzing continuous data, revealing what’s happening in the soil.


SoiLiNQ users can see a difference between water delivery and soil penetration - they’re alert to problems like overly compacted soil, important differences in air temperature and soil temperature, humidity variations, and more.

The result is reduced operational costs, and (usually) healthier, better looking plants.

The Bottom Line

Soil compaction doesn’t just make irrigation harder; it makes it more expensive. 

It hides water waste, starves roots of depth and minerals, increases the risk of overwatered or drowned plants.

Soil health is drastically improved by combining physical soil management (like aeration) with the intelligence of soil moisture monitoring.  Stop paying for water flowing off your crops and start irrigating with precision, reducing energy costs, and ensuring that every drop ends up where it needs to be: at the root zone.


Click here to learn about ways to reduce soil compaction: University of Delaware

]]>Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:47:11 +0000<![CDATA[Trust is a Requirement, Not a Feature]]>http://soilinq-test.zohosites.ca/news_and_events/post/trust-is-a-requirementGinkgo, OCI, and Vineland Research are cooperating on Machine Learning R&D for GreenTech. This ML Project will be by Sean Militello at Ginkgo Sustainability, and Rhoda de Jonge, at Vineland Research and Innovation Centre. It will leverage the SoiLiNQ proprietary sensor.]]>

Driving Smarter Plant Health Insights Through Partnership and Innovation

At Ginkgo Sustainability Inc., we believe that better data leads to better decisions - especially when it comes to the health of the living environments we help build and maintain. That’s why we’re thrilled to launch a collaborative project with Vineland Research & Innovation Centre and the Ontario Centre of Innovation, funded in part by OCI’s Critical Industrial Technologies program, to push the boundaries of machine learning to create a classification and prediction systems that we can trust.

This project marries cutting-edge technology with practical horticultural expertise. We’re using SoiLiNQ™, our soil and plant health IoT platform, to gather high-quality environmental data and build machine learning (ML) infrastructure that turns that data into meaningful insights.



What Makes This Collaboration Special

  • Real-world expertise meets advanced technology
    Vineland brings scientific and analytical rigor to carefully guide data collection and ensure it’s accurate and verifiable. The ML pipeline will be built using clean, trustworthy data, and deliver business intelligence customers can rely on.

  • Technology that works for many communities
    Using SoiLiNQ sensors to capture continuous data from a range soil and plant combinations, the project will deliver multiple narrowly scoped, highly effective machine learning models that users can trust, rather than a single model that gets it right some of the time.

  • Building for the future 
    Our goal is not only to analyze data but to create an efficient ML pipeline that scales with user needs, delivering predictive and prescriptive insights that help users act with confidence.

We look forward to sharing progress as the project evolves toward completion this September 2026. Stay tuned for updates, and if you haven’t already, follow SoiLiNQ at www.soilinq.ca to learn how actionable plant health insights can support your work.

]]>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:32:34 +0000<![CDATA[News & Events]]>http://soilinq-test.zohosites.ca/news_and_events/post/news-events

Welcome to our new Website!

As SoiLiNQ Approaches full commercial launch, we'll be posting new and important information and updates here.

Product updates and releases, upcoming research, and more! We'll be adding information and asking important questions.


We're excited to have you with us on our journey. 

"See you... out there!"

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