The Manitoba Mesonet Soil Moisture Monitoring.

The Manitoba Agriculture Weather Program started about two decades ago as a provincial government support aimed at providing seasonal, localized weather information to crop commodity groups in the province. The data generated by the network has historically been used for crop disease risk mapping such as Fusarium Head Blight and Potato Late Blight as well as crop phenology mapping of Growing Degree Days. However, as the value of the data produced from the network expanded beyond agricultural applications, the Manitoba mesonet has increased from about 40 to 110 weather stations over the last 3 years.

Manitoba often experience spring flooding and the flood of 2011 cost over $1 billion. The flood review report highlighted the need for observed soil moisture data in the province. Funding received through collaboration with Manitoba Infrastructure has resulted in the deployment of the first phase of soil moisture probes at 5 and 20 cm depth throughout the Mesonet. The second phase will include the deployment of two additional probes to monitor soil moisture and temperature at 50 and 100 cm depths. This presentation is a review of the MB mesonet with specific focus on the soil moisture monitoring aspect of the mesonet.