We’ve just released an update to LandPKS Soil ID with a number of important changes. Download version 1.4.7 for Android and iOS now! While we continue to work on our next goal of improving the soil color experience and the soil health module, here are highlights of the recent changes.
Extended Soil Pit Depths
We’ve extended the maximum depth of soil pits in LandPKS Soil ID to 300cm. Previously, we supported data collection up to the maximum used by the Soil ID algorithm (200cm), but the reality is that soils can be much deeper. LandPKS Soil ID user Professor Yuriy Dmytruk shared that he personally has experienced soils of 280cm in Ukraine. At his request, we extended the depth so that users can capture more complete soil profiles. Thanks to Dr. Dmytruk for being a beta tester and for suggesting the change. If you have a request for how we can make LandPKS more useful to you, please contact us.
For the curious: the Soil ID algorithm compares a user’s recorded soil observations with profiles from soil maps to depths up to 200cm. This is because the soil maps we use only extend to that depth, even if it is possible to dig much deeper. As a result, observations made at levels deeper than 200cm won’t impact our soil predictions, but can certainly be exported and used in your own analysis.
Streamlined Account Deletion
This release also automates much of the process of account deletion in LandPKS Soil ID. We consider ourselves custodians of your data, and we take seriously our obligation to let you export your data for use elsewhere, and to delete it if you ask. This is a complicated process, though, and we want to share the details for those of you who might be interested.
As software developers we collect different types of data, including how people are using our products, personal information (such as name and email) and, of course, soil observations collected at sites and related project information. You can read our privacy policy for the legal details; this post will outline specifically what happens when you delete your account.
Users can delete their accounts by going to their app settings. After confirming the decision, we delete several things:
- Your unaffiliated LandPKS sites
- Your LandPKS projects with no other managers, and their affiliated sites
- Your Terraso account
We don’t delete LandPKS observations you entered in projects with other managers – our assumption is that the data is stewarded by those remaining project managers.
Deleting an account marks the data for permanent deletion and starts a 30 day timer on our server, during which time the user can change their mind and contact us to ask for the account to be restored. The account information is still stored on our server but not visible to any user. Once those 30 days pass, the account is permanently deleted. This means that when we examine our server, we don’t see the name or email address of the deleted user, or any of the content that once was affiliated with them. As far as the LandPKS server is concerned, if the user were to sign up for an account after their old one was permanently deleted, it would be the first time we see them.
Why not delete data immediately? Because deleting data is a high-consequence decision: the information is time-consuming to reproduce, and can’t be restored once it is truly gone, so we want to give the user a chance to undo the process if it was a mistake. We attempted to balance the user’s desire to delete information with the possibility that they may want to reverse the decision. If circumstances arise that require permanent deletion immediately, please contact us.
All this being said, there are some ways that user data persists after an account deletion.
- We keep a daily backup of our server that lasts two weeks, in case there is some catastrophic event that impacts our service.
- Our analytics tool records types of user activities; that information isn’t deleted at this time. That’s a potential point of improvement that we’re pursuing.
- If users sign up for our newsletter, we keep track of that in a separate service: we offer a one-click unsubscribe service from all of our communications, but don’t delete the user data unless we are asked.
- If users provide exported data to someone using our export process, that export persists: we can’t control how people use data once it leaves our service.
Terraso has adopted the Better Deal For Data, a standard for trustworthy data practices and principles for nonprofit organizations. A big part of data stewardship is developing trust. We hope that by describing our practices – and being clear when we change them – we can earn your trust.
Other improvements in this release include several user experience enhancements, links to our updated website, and bug-fixes for the Soil ID algorithm. For a full list of changes, please view our changelog.
Featured image: “Чорнозем_типовий” by Serhii Rieznik, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC 4.0
