Evaluating soil property information on a landscape
2002
- UW-Madison Dept. of Soil Science
Project Media
Agricultural models such as the Precision Agricultural Landscape Modeling System (PALMS) are designed to facilitate producers’ management strategies in a precision agriculture environment (Molling et al., 2001). Maps, such as soil water content, grain moisture, and effects of compaction on yield, can supplement management decisions and increase the profit margin in production agriculture. Presuming that precision landscape models will be used by farm managers, we can identify four categories of information that will be needed: weather, landscape, plant, and management. Of these four categories, weather, plant, and management change on a continuous basis, anywhere from hours (weather), to days (management, such as planting, tillage, harvest), to seasons (hybrids). This information needs to be collected on a continuous basis – fortunately not an excessively costly or time-consuming process in most situations. Landscape information, on the other hand, can be very costly and time-consuming to collect. Landscape data, such as topography and soil hydraulic properties, are essentially fixed (except in cases of severe erosion or compaction) and can be collected once.