Soil Moisture Monitoring – Pastures Case Study

Agriculture Victoria has installed several soil moisture probes on a range of soil and pasture types across Victoria.

Soil moisture probes have helped with making early decisions in the cropping industry for some time with monthly analysis produced as a newsletter by Dale Boyd.

The probes are capacitance enviropro probes manufactured in South Australia and are 80 centimetres long with eight sensors internally to provide soil water content values and temperature every 10 centimetres.

This will collect information on water infiltration after rain events and plants using water as they grow dry matter (particularly in the absence of rain).

The probes are factory calibrated in a light soil medium but are currently not field calibrated to the soil type they have been installed into and so the figures recorded do not represent millimetre of soil moisture.

Over time and a range of season the data will eventually show maximum and minimum soil moisture capacity so a percentage of profile full will be indicated and at the time of interest. Different soil types at each site means they cannot be directly compared to other sites and are best assessed individually.

All sites are currently useful to show relative movement/use of moisture down the profile for soil types/plant species.