Richard Pickett explains field elevation mapping with drones.
Suggested Event
Jun 15, 2021 to Jun 17, 2021
Can farmers and consultants use unmanned aerial vehicles or drones to help precision-level their fields more efficiently and economically?
The short answer is yes, according to Richard Pickett, owner and chief pilot of P&P Consulting LLC in Jonesboro, Ark. But it comes with some caveats, as Pickett explained during a presentation for this year’s virtual Arkansas Soil and Water Education Conference.
One of those has to do with the slow Internet speeds that farmers often encounter when they try to download information. Another is the sheer volume of data that UAVs can generate when they fly across large acreages.
Economics team studies the impact of Mississippi Aquifer Plain depletion.
Suggested Event
Jun 15, 2021 to Jun 17, 2021
Farmers and leaders of their organizations know the Mississippi Alluvial Plain’s aquifer has been declining in places. But they don’t always know by how much or what economic impact the decline might have.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s five-year Mississippi Alluvial Plain project is attempting to help them have a better understanding of where groundwater supplies are heading, according to Dr. J.R. Rigby, a water resources research hydrologist.
Rigby, who works with the USGS’s Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center in Oxford, Miss., discussed where the MAP project has been and where USGS and USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists hope it will be going in a presentation to the virtual Arkansas Soil and Water Education Conference earlier this year.
USGS seeking more information on LMRV streams for aquifer recharge study.
Suggested Event
Aug 31, 2021 to Sep 02, 2021
In many years, heavy snowfall in the Midwest results in prolonged periods of flooding in the Lower Mississippi River Valley. But how much of that water, if any, flows into the aquifer underlying the Mississippi Alluvial Plain or MAP?
Scientists with the USDA-ARS Watershed Physical Processes Research Unit in Oxford, Miss., and USGS are studying recharge and other aspects of the physical properties of the aquifer that provides irrigation water for millions of acres of crops in the Mid-South.
Those scientists have used airborne electro-magnetic or AEM measuring to develop a new index that allows them to estimate “whether we think there is high conductivity or low conductivity between the rivers and the aquifer,” said Dr. J.R. Rigby, team lead and research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Service’s Water Resources Mission Area and USDA-ARS.
USGS and USDA’s ARS are using new tools to explore the Mississippi Alluvial Plain.
The Mississippi Alluvial Plain runs from southeast Missouri through Arkansas, west Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. For decades the shallow aquifer beneath the MAP has provided irrigation water for millions of acres of corn, cotton, rice and soybeans.
But declining water levels and increasing energy costs are leading scientists, such as Dr. J.R. Rigby, a team lead and research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, to take a closer look at just how plentiful and cheap water from the aquifer may be in the future.
How much seed should you plant to achieve the highest possible yield? That’s a question growers and agronomists have been asking for years as more and more farmers have tried to maximize productivity to increase revenues.
But what if you change the question to how much seed do you have to plant to have a profitable yield? That’s what farmers like Adam Chappell have begun to ask as they try to figure out how to survive in the current economic climate.
“How many of y’all are actively trying to lower inputs rather than protecting a yield goal” said Chappell, one of the speakers for this year’s first-ever virtual Arkansas Soil and Water Education Conference at Arkansas State University. “Where do we look to find a more profitable system? What questions do we ask?