SOIL MOISTURE

Colorado State University is leading a statewide effort to enhance soil moisture monitoring, which produces increasingly important insights that can help everyone from farmers to weather forecasters better predict water supplies, understand the risk of wildfire, and assess the impacts of drought.

“Soil moisture is one of the most under-monitored natural resources, yet it is a foundational driver of ecosystem services and risk management,” said Helen Silver, a leader of the monitoring work.

In Colorado, estimates suggest that the amount of water stored in soils is more than twice the amount that flows on the surface. With the Western U.S. facing challenges with water availability due to drought and other factors, there is heightened interest in better understanding and monitoring this critical resource.

The state’s existing monitoring capacity did not broadly capture Colorado’s diverse landscapes, river basins, and land uses. Early last year, the federal government allocated $1.45 million for CSU to lead an expansion of the number of in-ground sensors that can measure soil moisture.

From May to October, a team of researchers installed an additional 64 sensors at sites across the state, expanding Colorado’s monitoring capacity by roughly 60 percent. The expansion, a project known as the Colorado Open Soil Moisture Monitoring Network, focused on areas that were underrepresented by existing infrastructure. CSU has recently received additional funding from the state’s Colorado Water Plan Grant Program to install another 15 sensors this year.