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ARS Home » Plains Area » Bushland, Texas » Conservation and Production Research Laboratory » Soil and Water Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #369274
Research Project: Precipitation and Irrigation Management to Optimize Profits from Crop Production

Location: Soil and Water Management Research

Title: Soil water sensing from afar: How the Cloud is enabling remote data collection

Author
item Evett, Steven - Steve
item STROHMEIER, STEFAN - International Centre For Agricultural Research In The Dry Areas (ICARDA)
item HADDAD, MIRA - International Centre For Agricultural Research In The Dry Areas (ICARDA)
item Schomberg, Harry
item O`Shaughnessy, Susan
item Thompson, Alondra

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/25/2019
Publication Date: 12/4/2019
Citation: Evett, S.R., Strohmeier, S., Haddad, M., Schomberg, H.H., O'Shaughnessy, S.A., Thompson, A.I. 2019. Soil water sensing from afar: How the Cloud is enabling remote data collection [abstract]. Irrigation Association Trade Show, December 2-6, 2019, Las Vegas, Nevada.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Soil water sensors and systems are becoming ubiquitous, and are increasingly requested by growers, but there is a lack of robust solutions for transmitting data wirelessly from the field to where it can be accessed for decision making. USDA Agricultural Research Service has developed a wireless node and gateway systems that uses the LoRa radio transmission system to reliably transmit data from sensors in fields of growing crops to a gateway that collects data from several nodes. The gateway transmits the data to the Cloud through a cellular modem. The system, first introduced in 2017, has been substantially improved and made capable of use internationally as well as nationally. This presentation will discuss the installation of soil water sensors in a watershed in Jordan in the Middle East, and how the node and gateway system was used to deliver data to the Cloud for access from any computing device anywhere in the world. Results of a system test in a field of irrigated cotton at Bushland, Texas, will also be presented. Takeaways: 1) A robust solution is presented for the problem of wireless transmission of soil water content data to decision makers wherever they may be; 2) The system was tested in Maryland, North Carolina, Texas and the Middle East, showing that it can be deployed anywhere there is a public cellular network.