José Lucas Safanelli Ph.D.

  • Research Scientist
Jose Stafanelli

I work to advance our understanding of how soils and agricultural systems naturally behave and are affected by management decisions, ultimately ensuring more sustainable food production and climate benefits.

By integrating sensor technologies with modern data science tools, I study how to improve our ability to measure, map, and monitor soils at scale, thereby increasing our confidence in detecting changes across agricultural landscapes.

two researchers crouch in an agricultural field, using a handheld scanner to examine the soil

I am an advocate and dedicated contributor to the open-source community, creating and collaborating on automated software, open repositories, and open data to ensure transparency and reproducible applications.

I’ve been co-leading the Soil Spectroscopy for Global Good initiative, which promotes and develops soil spectroscopy as a rapid, affordable, and environmentally benign tool for measuring soils at scale.

Projects

Soil.Spectroscopy

Bringing together soil scientists, spectroscopists, informaticians, data scientists, and software engineers to overcome bottlenecks preventing wider and more efficient use of soil spectroscopy.

Selected Publications

The utility of laboratory measurement uncertainty: A case-study using the Open Soil Spectral Library service

Grover, K., J.L. Safanelli, J. Sanderman, B.G. Hopkins, C. Brungard (2025). European Journal of Soil Science.

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Application of a handheld near infrared spectrophotometer to farm-scale soil carbon monitoring

Sanderman, J., C. Partida, J.L. Safanelli, K. Shepherd, Y. Ge, S.M. Mitu, & R. Ferguson (2025). European Journal of Soil Science.

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Open Soil Spectral Library (OSSL): Building reproducible soil calibration models through open development and community engagement

Safanelli, J.L, T. Hengl, L.L. Parente, R. Minarik, D.E. Bloom, K. Todd-Brown, A. Gholizadeh, W. de Sousa Mendes, & J. Sanderman (2025). PLoS ONE.

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