Monitoring soil moisture in grazing systems – SA (Video)
In this video, Brett Nietschke from the Barossa Improved Grazing Group, explains a project that uses three weather stations to monitor soil moisture and other weather data in the Barossa Region in South Australia. The weather stations contain a subsurface capacitance soil moisture probe, automatic rain gauge, temperature and relative humidity sensor, radiation sensor and an anemometer to measure wind speed. The recorded data is uploaded in real time to a website that can be accessed by graziers and anyone else. Soil moisture together with other variables dictate pasture quantity. The soil moisture data enables graziers to calculate the plant available water (PAW) which estimates the total amount of water that plants can access in the soil profile. This enables graziers to predict pasture production in the coming months. In addition, the soil moisture and weather data from the weather stations is used to develop indices to help graziers in their decision-making, such as assessing the risk of crop fire at harvest. It can also be used to develop modelling tools. This video is relevant to other Australian regions [5:16].#
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