93-5 Spatial and Temporal Variability of Soil Water Content in Leveled Fields.

See more from this Division: ASA Section: Agronomic Production Systems
See more from this Session: Digital Soil Mapping for Precision Agriculture: I

Monday, November 16, 2015: 2:05 PM
Minneapolis Convention Center, 102 F

Louis Longchamps, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO and Raj Khosla, 1170 Campus Delivery, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO
Abstract:
Precision irrigation in time and space stands as a promising way of managing crop irrigation water in a more sustainable way. While precision irrigation is at its infancy stage, farmers and crop practitioners often doubt the existence of spatial variability of soil water content in leveled fields (slope of 1% or lower). The objectives of this study were to quantify the spatial and temporal variability of soil water content in leveled fields. Neutron probe readings were acquired at 5 depths over a whole crop growing season at two sites from north eastern Colorado. A total of 41 and 31 locations were monitored at site 1 and 2 respectively. Moran’s I and semivariograms were used to study the data. Results showed that up to 87% of measured soil water content locations across leveled fields can be in a different management class than the field’s average. In general, the spatial and temporal variability of soil water content observed in this study was conducive to the implementation of water management zones because it was variable in space with long spatial range, doubled with long temporal dependency.

See more from this Division: ASA Section: Agronomic Production Systems
See more from this Session: Digital Soil Mapping for Precision Agriculture: I