News Archive

When Sangu Angadi was traveling to his science center office in Clovis, New Mexico, one spring day, he was engulfed in the dust of a prairie windstorm. As a crop scientist, Angadi had a pretty good idea of the source of the dust – fallow fields that had dried to powder over the winter months. What he learned later would spur him into seeking new solutions to this decades-long, and worsening challenge.

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reeTown USA today announced it has made a donation to the University of California, Davis’ California Center for Urban Horticulture (CCUH) to help develop water-conserving landscapes under its SmartLandscape Initiative. It is part of the company’s ongoing commitment to support the horticulture industry in providing resource conservation and sustainable urban landscapes.

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Farming across the midwest is about to get a lot smarter thanks to smart sensors being developed at the University of Iowa. Professor Jun Wang at the University of Iowa’s College of Engineering knows weather changes can make it or break it for farmers. His background in Atmospheric studies and understanding of farming practices led him to develop a way for farmers to adopt a concept called precision farming. From a microchip prototype to a smart sensor, Professor Wang and his team are working to take the guesswork out of farming and help farmers save money on water resources. The smart sensor they’ve developed gathers real-time information and sends it back to an online data cloud system, via wifi.

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Several farmers, particularly in southwest Indiana, are trying to improve the health of their soil while using irrigation. Many are discovering that using cover crops in their irrigation systems can help reduce costs, thereby increasing potential profit margin. If you’re not using cover crops, you probably are wondering how they can make a difference. Are you limited to how much water you can put on at one time or in one pass of your unit? Do you see runoff from your irrigated field even if you only apply a half-inch of water? Would you like to increase the amount of water you can put on in one pass? Can introducing cover crops into your system make that much difference? If you answered “yes” to the first three questions, the good news is that the answer to the fourth question is also “yes.” Cover crops can make a difference.

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If you’ve ever dragged around a hose and sprinkler to water your lawn, you know the pain. It takes time and energy, and imagine if you had a farm to irrigate. WaterBit is a lot like a sprinkler system for the yard, designed for farmers. It uses sensors to give farmers more control over how much water and other nutrients are reaching their crops. Soil conditions are monitored through a remote dashboard and farmers can leverage the infrastructure to more precisely apply water according to specific plant needs.

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Many strategies can enhance resilience to climate change and other future challenges – and these strategies often also provide immediate benefits to farming and ranching operations. This case study series explores strategies that innovative farmers and ranchers in our region are already using, and which may be of interest to others. Each case study and its complementary video centers around the experience of a regional producer, and provide summaries of relevant biophysical, economic, and social science that help inform when and how these strategies might work in other places.

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With water waste a growing problem nationwide, an interdisciplinary team of engineers, irrigation researchers and turfgrass experts have spent the past two years designing a solution to conserve strained water supplies in municipal landscapes.

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Spruce up your yard—and lower your water bill—with these pro tips from the Denver Botanic Gardens and water-conscious Colorado community Sterling Ranch.

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Innovative program teaches high school students sophisticated irrigation concepts.

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Producers in the Texas High Plains will soon be able to run advanced budgeting scenarios before planting non-traditional crops such as vegetables on smaller acreages.

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