{"id":47,"date":"2015-08-17T11:25:59","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T15:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/?p=47"},"modified":"2015-08-17T11:25:59","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T15:25:59","slug":"soil-moisture-sensors-can-help-manage-grazing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/2015\/08\/17\/soil-moisture-sensors-can-help-manage-grazing\/","title":{"rendered":"Soil Moisture Sensors Can Help Manage Grazing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As predictions for the Northeastern U.S. suggest wetter, warmer climate in the near future, the use of technology such as precision agriculture can be of great use to enable a more sustainable modern day farming.<\/p>\n<p>One of the tools the UVM Extension <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/sustainableagriculture\/\" target=\"S0KXe9iygh5V0feDCNol4zA\">Center for Sustainable Agriculture<\/a> is using to evaluate, for among other things, the most appropriate moment to graze, are soil moisture sensors (SMS). They can track real-time water movement and record information that can be instantly viewed on a computer or a smartphone.<\/p>\n<p>Soil moisture varies depending on soil types, precipitation and temperature. Soil moisture devices can be used under several ground cover conditions, and can help create moisture maps of the areas by the use of global positioning systems (GPS) at any given time in the season.<\/p>\n<p>By using devices such as SMS, farmers are able to make real-time decisions about where they will place their animals or establish crops without causing soil compaction or destroying ground cover.<\/p>\n<p>In 2015, we installed three-SMS at <a href=\"http:\/\/healthheroislandfarm.com\/\" target=\"S0KXe9iygh5V0feDCNol4zA\">Health Hero Farm<\/a> in South Hero, Vermont as part of a 3-year USDA NRCS <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/sustainableagriculture\/?Page=whatwedo\/projectsresearch\/SoilCompaction.html\" target=\"S0KXe9iygh5V0feDCNol4zA\">funded research<\/a>. Farmer Eric N\u00f6el, who grazes about 80 cows at at Health Hero, welcomes cutting-edge research that can help him and other farmers take instant action on farm management decisions. N\u00f6el understands that placing animals or running machinery on wet soils can quickly aggravate soil physical conditions like structure, compaction and infiltration.<\/p>\n<p>We look forward to presenting results from this project as we go on.\u00a0 In the meantime:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Please visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/~susagctr\/?Page=whatwedo\/projectsresearch\/SoilCompaction.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a> for more information about this research project.<\/li>\n<li>Please visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/~susagctr\/?Page=whatwedo\/pasture\/pasture_about.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a> for more about the Center&#8217;s Pasture Program.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"attachment_49\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/files\/2015\/08\/SMSJoshuaHands.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-49\" class=\"wp-image-49 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/files\/2015\/08\/SMSJoshuaHands-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Picture of Installation of Soil Moisture Sensor\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-49\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Farming &amp; Climate Change Coordinator Joshua Faulkner places a Soil Moisture Monitor in a Health Hero Farm pasture<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_48\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/files\/2015\/08\/SMSFrontView.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-48\" class=\"wp-image-48 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/files\/2015\/08\/SMSFrontView-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Installed Monitors, Front View\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-48\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Installed Soil Moisture Sensors, Front View<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As predictions for the Northeastern U.S. suggest wetter, warmer climate in the near future, the use of technology such as precision agriculture can be of great use to enable a more sustainable modern day farming. One of the tools the UVM Extension Center for Sustainable Agriculture is using to evaluate, for among other things, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2893,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263018,262290,261947,38213,35870,22111,27200,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cattle","category-farming-and-climate-change","category-grass-farming","category-grazing","category-livestock","category-pasture","category-sustainable-agriculture","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/susagctr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}