Is it Useful to Measure Soil Electrical Conductivity?
2000
- UW-Madison Dept. of Soil Science
Project Media
The success of precision agriculture depends on the economic and time feasibility of its implementation. Currently, GIS systems have capacity to analyze large amounts of spatial grid data; however, collecting, analyzing, and interpreting soil data can be expensive, time consuming, and labor intensive. One way to decrease costs associated with acquiring soil data is to develop techniques for rapidly and noninvasively measuring soil properties across a field. One soil property that can be rapidly measured in-situ by using electromagnetic induction is bulk electrical conductivity (EC). Previous EC research has shown correlations with soil water storage (Kachanoski et al., 1990; Kachanoski et al., 1988), soil organic matter (Jaynes et al., 1995); (Banton et al., 1997), salinity (Williams and Hoey, 1987), and soil texture (Williams and Hoey, 1987); (Banton et al., 1997).