EAGER SitS: Quantifying the value of information for sensor placements to improve soil signals for agricultural water management

鉴于全球粮食安全对强有力的农业水管理的依赖，有必要更好地了解不同类型环境中的土壤水分信号。这些信号是农业水管理的重要投入。缺乏对土壤水分信号的适当了解仍然是可持续农业管理中的一个长期挑战，特别是在干旱条件下。建立这样的认识是本研究的主题。土壤水分的空间异质性和变异性极大地阻碍了利用点尺度现场监测来捕捉这一变量的动态。虽然遥感产品可以提供土壤水分信息，但它们只能提供粗分辨率的聚集信息，而且往往具有很大的不确定性，这不适合于需要更精细/局部尺度信息的农业水资源管理。该项目将进行土壤水分监测(传感器)网络的稳健设计，旨在确保提供给利益相关者(例如农民和牧场主)的数据得到充分和适当的表达，以便他们能够就自己的水管理需求做出最明智的决定。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Given the reliance of global food security on robust agricultural water management, there is a need to better inform and improve understanding of soil moisture signals in different types of environments. Such signals are an important input for agricultural water management. The lack of proper understanding of soil moisture signals remains a persistent challenge in sustainable agricultural management, especially during drought conditions. Developing such an understanding is the subject of this research.The spatial heterogeneity and variability of soil moisture greatly hinders the use of point scale in situ monitoring for capturing the dynamics of this variable. Although remote sensing products are available to provide soil moisture information, they are limited in providing only aggregated information at coarse resolution and are often characterized by large uncertainty, which is unsuitable for agricultural water management that requires finer/local scale information. The robust design of soil moisture monitoring (sensor) networks to be pursued by this project is targeted to ensure the sufficient and adequate representation of data provided to stakeholders (e.g. farmers and ranchers) so that they can make the most informed decisions possible concerning their own water management needs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.