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You can find a brief explanation of who I am, the virtual soils project, and the other resources available on this site!!

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The Virtual Soils Project Open Media Resources Research Portfolio
In the field as part my research into soil silicon stocks and cycling for the Kwiakah Nation in June 2025!
Learn more about the Kwiakah First Nation at kwiakah.com

Hi and Hello!

Welcome to AmyWells.ca!

My name is Amy Wells! I am a master's student in the SoilRES3 Lab at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Land and food Systems. My masters research has two areas of interest:

  1. First, how ancestral and industrial land management have impacted the stocks, and cycling of silicon (Si) within the soils of the Kwiakah First Nation
  2. Second, how the emerging technologies of 3D-Gaussian splats can be combined with web and VR based resources in the field of soil science to enhance soil science education, and science communication.

My research is being conducted under the supervision of Dr. Jean-Thomas Cornelis, and Dr. Maja Krzic.

This site, amywells.ca, was started originally to showcase UBC course work, and has since become a platform to serve as a showcase of the things I am most proud of!

It also serves as a testing ground for building my skills in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so if parts of the site are broken, or look like they're still in development, the odds are that its on the list of things to build on, and improve in future!

The Virtual Soils Project

Virtual Soils being used to communicate the soil-people-land relationships found in Sts'ailes Forest Gardens at the First FAO Global Exhibition: From Seeds to Foods in October 2025. Photo by Andrew Apostolopoulos

The Virtual Soils Project is a project I started to apply the emerging technology of radiance fields, starting with Neural Radiance Fields (Mildenhall et al., 2020), and now with 3D-Gaussian splats (Kerbl et al., 2023) within the field of soil science.

I started the project believing that 3D-Gaussian splats have potential to:

  1. Enhance soil science education through the creation of exciting, and innovative teaching tools that center learners as active participants.
  2. Allow for more engaging science communication and outreach, particularly with community partners.
  3. Make soils accessible to all research participants, regardless of distance or logistical complexity.

Today I am proud to say that Virtual Soils is being developed in collaboration with Dr. Maja Krzic, the UBC Emerging Media Lab, industry partners like Nucleus4D, and community partners like the Sts'ailes First Nation and Kwiakah First Nation.

Work to date on this project has worked to establish a "standard" method that allows for "Virtual Soils" to be consistently captured and reconstructed, a Virtual Reality (VR) demo using publicly accessible VR platforms, and a web-based platform for exploring Virtual Soils models.

There is much more work to do in the future, including publishing resources for scientists, teachers, and students!

If you would like to get in contact about Virtual Soils, email me at amy.wells@virtualsoils.ca!