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--></style><title>Water/Ag: A level field doesn't make irrigation
decisions</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Arial" size="+2" color="#161616">Study finds
significant variability in soil moisture across leveled
fields</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#1A1A1A">December 10, 2015</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" size="-1" color="#1A1A1A"><br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#0040C2"><u
>https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/story/2015/dec/fri/study-finds-signi</u
></font><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#1A1A1A"
>ficant-variability-in-soil-moisture-across-leveled-fields</font></div
>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#1A1A1A"><br>
Scientists, extension personnel, and crop advisers often hear,
"This farm field was laser-leveled, and has only one soil type.
So there is hardly any variability to justify variable-rate
irrigation."<br>
<i><br>
</i>In a study that published in September-October 2015 issue of<i>
Soil Science Society of America Journal</i>, a team of researchers
from Colorado and China put these statements to the test.<br>
<br>
Topography<i> is</i> the main driver of spatial patterns in soil water
content across crop fields, the team explains. However, in leveled
fields, factors such as soil texture, soil depth, and organic matter
content, among others, can still influence the spatial pattern of soil
water content.<br>
<br>
Using a neutron probe, the researchers measured the soil water content
of leveled fields at a high spatial density, at five depths, and over
an entire season. Doing so enabled them to study changes in soil water
content from one location of the field to another, as well as changes
happening between superficial and deeper soil profiles, and with
time.<br>
<br>
They discovered two significant findings: Soil water content does vary
across levelled fields, and the spatial patterns related to this
variability themselves change over time and across
depths.</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#1A1A1A">These findings are eye-opening
for farmers managing irrigation on leveled fields, and should
encourage them to think twice about their current
practices.</font><font face="Arial" size="-1" color="#141414"><br>
</font><font face="Courier" size="-3" color="#141414">--</font><br>
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<div><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-1"
color="#000000">=======================</font></div>
<div><font face="Bookman Old Style" color="#000000">"Booms have
consequences."</font></div>
<div><font face="Bookman Old Style" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="-1" color="#000000">James
Grant.<i> Money of the Mind : Borrowing and Lending in America from
the Civil War to Michael Milken.</i> Farrar Straus Giroux.
1992.</font></div>
<div><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="-1"
color="#000000"> </font><font face="Geneva" size="-1"
color="#000000"><br>
</font><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="-1"
color="#000000"><b>Introduction, p.5.<br>
</b>"Real estate speculation must be as old as the land - in the
United States, it is certainly as old as the frontier - and the first
bad bank loan was no doubt made around the time of the opening of the
first bank."<br>
<br>
"Still, the boom of the 1980s was unique. Not only did creditors
lend more freely than they had in the past, but the government
intervened more actively than it had ever done before to absorb the
inevitable losses."<br>
<br>
<b>Afterword: End of the Line. Pp. 436-437<br>
</b>"In the early 1990s a number of long-running trends were
apparently cresting Š. Tommy Mullaney, eleven, of Crownsville,
Maryland, returned home from camp in the summer of 1990 to find his
name inscribed on a MasterCard complete with a $5,000 credit line.
' I jumped up and down and said Wow - the hologram was cool,'
Tommy told the Washington Post. 'But it sure made me wonder who was
running that bank'."</font><br>
<font face="Bookman Old Style" size="-1" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="-1" color="#000000">James
Grant.<i> Money of the Mind: Borrowing and Lending in America from the
Civil War to Micheal Milken.</i> Farrar Straus Giroux.
1992.</font></div>
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