Optimizing Soil Moisture Sensor Placement under Western Kentucky Irrigated Systems for Soil and Water Conservation

Soil moisture monitoring is a very important component to irrigation event scheduling. This has the potential to save energy, money, water and nutrient and sediment losses via leaching and surface runoff. However, this technology is expensive and time consuming to operate therefore most row crop producers base their irrigation events based on precipitation records or soil moisture conditions in one or two points in a field. Therefore the location of these soil moisture measurements are critical as they must represent the soil moisture conditions in the majority of the field for irrigation events leading to optimal yield while minimizing soil erosion and nutrient loss.