There is no doubt that water is a precious resource, particularly in drought prone regions like California. It is very important for growers to measure soil moisture and there are a bevy of technological devices available to utilize. From soil moisture probes to pressure bombs, these tools are helpful but, they only provide data on once specific area at a time and many are time consuming to use.

Today, there is a lot of free satellite data available and that data is being captured by Irriwatch. Founder and CEO Wim Bastiaanssen is an international academic leader and is engaged as a Visiting Professor at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). He holds a Ph.D. degree in crop-soil-atmospheric physics from Wageningen University.

Having grown up on a potato farm, Wim aims to provide practical guidelines for irrigation management. The IrriWatch software aggregates data from 10 satellites to provide daily moisture measurements down to the pixel, allowing growers to optimize irrigation water applications in a world of dynamical weather, soil and crop processes.

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108: Using Satellite Data for Irrigation Scheduling

Sustainable Winegrowing