IEM Daily Feature
Wednesday, 21 June 2017

Daily Soil Water Changes

Posted: 21 Jun 2017 05:30 AM

The featured chart presents estimates of the soil water condition based on soil moisture observations by the ISU Soil Moisture station at the ISU Ames AEA Farm. Two measurements are used to estimated soil water between the 6 and 30 inch depth layer. The chart presents the day to day change in soil water through that depth. You may notice that the daily drain is a small fraction of the total water, but there are caveats. Not all of that soil water in the layer is available for uptake by the plant roots and the water depletion will increase as more roots enter this layer from above. The moral of the story is that we really need some rain to build up more reserves to make it through the growing season.

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