Three new permanent weather stations were built in 2019 on UI research farms with support from Idaho’s Agricultural Research and Experiment Station. These stations monitor weather conditions that are pertinent to local farm operations. New laboratory equipment for calibrating and maintaining these stations is currently housed at the PI’s lab on the UI campus, and is used for regular maintenance and calibration of station sensors. In conjunction with support from the Harris Fellowship, 11 additional low-cost weather stations were installed in 2019 in collaborative on-farm projects located in Ashton and Juliaetta, Idaho. In 2020, a fourth station was installed at UI’s research dairy in Rupert Idaho, and a fifth at Sandpoint Organic Agriculture Center in Sandpoint Idaho.
Grants
2020 UI Presidential Initiative on Water and Sustainability “Managing Water and Regenerating
Degraded Soils in SensorCentric Irrigated Cropping Systems” . Co-PI with Erin Brooks (UI)
and Linda Schott (UI Extension). Project Award $22,685.
USDA/ODA Oregon Specialty Crop Block Grant “Promoting Sensor-Based Irrigation
Management” PI Lloyd Nackley (Oregon State University). Project Award $152,098UI
ORED Equipment Support Award “Northern Idaho Agricultural Weather Network – Pilot
Implementation” Sole PI. Project Total $39,943. Completed 2019
Publications and Presentations
McCauley, Dalyn. M., Nackley, L.L., Kelley, J., 2021. Demonstration of a low-cost and open source platform for on-farm monitoring and decision support. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 187, 106284. DOI: 10.1016/j.compag.2021.106284
Kelley, Jason. “Using on-site weather in irrigation scheduling software”. Part of UI Extension workshop Water and Weather: Sustainable Irrigation Systems for Small Farms and Market
Gardens. Moscow, Idaho, 01 March 2020.
Kelley, Jason. “Using Data Science Tools to Expand Agro-meteorological Networks and Engage Stakeholders in Collaboration”. Annual Meeting of the Amer. Geophysical Union. San Francisco, California, 12 December 2019.
McCauley, Dalyn, and Kelley, Jason. “Initial Results of Using Canopy Reflectance and Distributed Sensor Stations to Monitor Crop Damaging Events”, Int’l Meeting of ASABE, Boston MA, 09 July 2019.
Kelley, Jason. “Collaborating with Ag Producers to Leverage On-Farm Weather Data” Int’l Meeting of ASABE, Boston MA, 09 July 2019.
Kelley, Jason. “Data-driven Agriculture & On-Farm Collaboration”, Meeting of the Climate
Impact Research Consortium (Invited), Corvallis, Oregon, 18Jun2019.