Colorado State University is leading an effort to track a critical but unseen resource in Colorado: water stored in soil. This statewide effort to enhance soil moisture monitoring is producing important insights that can help everyone from farmers to weather forecasters better predict water supplies, understand the risk of wildfire and assess the impacts of drought.
“Soil moisture is one of the most under-monitored natural resources, yet it is a foundational driver of ecosystem services and risk management,” said Helen Silver, co-director of CSU’s Integrated Rocky Mountain-region Innovation Center for Healthy Soils, or IN-RICHES, which is helping to lead the work. “Because soil moisture data are both scarce and difficult to access, this project addresses both challenges by expanding monitoring infrastructure while making the resulting information openly available and usable for land managers, policymakers and researchers.”
In Colorado, estimates suggest that the amount of water stored in soils is more than twice the amount that flows on the surface. As the Western U.S. faces growing challenges with water availability due to drought, climate variability and competing demands, there is heightened interest in better understanding and monitoring this critical resource. The work is being done in collaboration with the Colorado Climate Center and the CSU’s Department of Computer Sciences.
Source : colostate.edu