Abdelkrim Lachgar
Education: Ph.D. ’24, Cornell Advisor: Louis Longchamps, Soil and Crop Sciences
EDF Advisors: Emily Oldfield and Jocelyn Lavalee
Dr. Abdelkrim Lachgar is a 2025 EDF-Cornell Atkinson Joint Postdoc. Dr. Lachgar is a soil data scientist and agronomist with more than 15 years of experience in soil health, agronomy, conservation agriculture, and rural territorial development. He earned an engineering degree in Agronomy and a PhD in Soil, Water & Climate from the University of Minnesota, where his research focused on developing cost-effective decision-support tools to characterize soil spatial variability for precision phosphorus management from cropland to regional scales.
His career spans academia, government, and industry, including leadership roles in regenerative agriculture and rural development initiatives with the Millennium Challenge, Cargill, and the Moroccan Department of Agriculture. Through these roles, he has contributed to large-scale programs aimed at improving soil health, strengthening agricultural productivity, and supporting sustainable rural livelihoods. Dr. Lachgar specializes in applying geospatial data, data mining, and spatial predictive modeling to advance precision agriculture and sustainable land management. He serves as a vital bridge between agronomic science, computational tools, and on-the-ground practices.
At Cornell University, Dr. Lachgar contributes to interdisciplinary research projects that empower farmer-led experimentation and data-driven decision-making. He is working with Professor Louis Longchamps and Emily Oldfield to develop accurate methods for measuring and mapping soil organic carbon stocks. Our goal is to help farmers adopt practices that increase carbon sequestration and improve soil health, while also supporting the development of credible agricultural carbon markets.
Designing a Reliable and Scalable Sampling Strategy for Regional Soil Carbon Stock Monitoring
Proactive management of agricultural soils can sequester carbon, build soil health over time, and contribute to climate mitigation, adaptation, and long-term farm viability. Governments and private actors are creating carbon markets to encourage and reward farmers for adopting sustainable management practices; however, verifying, and quantifying changes in soil carbon remains a major challenge. This project leverages soil carbon data collected by EDF and collaborators, integrating it with data from soil survey information, topography, remote sensing and land management records to delineate agricultural management zones and develop digital soil maps. The objective is to optimize soil carbon sampling strategies at regional scales and improve the reliability and credibility of agricultural carbon markets.