Soil Moisture Mapping At Field Capacity to Determine Texture Variability.

Surveys were conducted on three golf course holes (rough and fairway) at the Georgia Club golf course in Statham, GA and the Pine Hills golf course in Winder, GA. Each golf course was considered an experimental run, whereas holes were considered replications within each run. The Toro Precision Sense 6000 mobile data acquisition unit was used to geo-reference the delineation between the fairway and rough as well as obtain geo-referenced soil moisture (% volumetric water content, 10 cm depth) data for each hole. The unit was towed behind a utility vehicle at 1.9 mph in order to sample each site on a grid of 2.5 x 2.5 m. Mapping was conducted following a significant rainfall event/irrigation event that results in field capacity. A Trimble GeoExplorer 6000 hand-held GPS unit capable of decimeter precision was used to geo-reference irrigation heads across each individual hole. ArcGIS software was employed to analyze soil moisture spatial data. Data from the 2.5 x 2.5 m grid sampling was interpolated using the Kriging method to create raster maps of volumetric soil water content for each golf course hole. Categorical ranges were created for soil moisture using Jenk’s Natural Breaks method. Ranges were used to create maps of soil moisture with an overlaying layer of irrigation head placement. The hand-held GPS unit was used to superimpose a 9-m grid over each golf course hole to geo-reference and collect soil samples. Analysis of soil texture and particle size distribution was conducted and data was used to generate soil texture maps. Maps were overlaid to make correlations between soil moisture at field capacity and soil texture. Data generated from these maps can be used to support variable rate fertility and lime application programs.