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Spatial Apparent Electrical Conductivity (ECa), Soil Moisture and Water Use Efficiency in Vertosol Soils
J. N. Stanley, D. A. Schneider, D. W. Lamb
Precision Agriculture Research Group, University of New England, Australia

Producing high resolution maps of water use efficiency (crop yield per unit of water consumption; WUE) for precision crop management is limited by our ability to readily produce maps of soil moisture content. On-the-go grain yield monitors or biomass scans can provide a spatial measure of crop productivity, the numerator of a WUE ratio but water use, the denominator, is limited by physical practicalities to a few single-point measures. Volumetric moisture content inferred from an EM38 electromagnetic induction (EMI) survey, and biomass evolution (Z31-43) derived from optical reflectance measurements were combined for a wheat crop in order to generate a map of water use efficiency (t/ha/mm). Taken over the entire field, the change in soil moisture (mm) was found to explain 38% of the variance in the change in biomass (t/ha). The implications for using multi-temporal EMI surveys in combination with yield maps to produce a spatial measure of water use efficiency are discussed.

Keyword: EM38, spatial water measurement, electromagnetic induction survey, water use efficiency