Agriculture Victoria is inviting farmers, advisors and researchers to explore its new Soil Moisture Monitoring website in a ‘walk-through webinar’ next week.
Launched by the Minister for Agriculture, Jaclyn Symes, the new website showcases Agriculture Victoria’s soil moisture probe network and provides easier, quicker access to data, with an improved search function.
Agriculture Victoria’s seasonal risk agronomist and project co-ordinator Dale Boyd said the new website replaced the previous soil moisture data dashboard with a detailed page dedicated to each of the 36 soil moisture monitoring sites across the State.
“New tools featured on the website can translate soil moisture data into meaningful, real time, local information,” Mr Boyd said.
“My favourite tool is the ‘speedo’ graph showing change in overall soil moisture at a particular site,” he said.
“It’s a simple way to represent how the soil moisture profile has changed over the last year, in other words how full the ‘tank’ is.”
Mr Boyd said that previously, Agriculture Victoria could only show soil moisture data, without any real interpretation.
“The new website takes this data and adds value to it, with tools that are easy to use such as a temperature gauge, current soil moisture profile and a one to three-month rainfall outlook for the state,” he said.
He said the webinar, scheduled for 12pm next Wednesday (17 June), would be recorded and made available on Agriculture Victoria’s website.
The new Soil Moisture Monitoring website can be accessed at this PS News link.
