Soil texture, EM31 and recharge (1998)

Hume, I Mitchell, D Dunn, B

1998

This IREC Farmer Newsletter article present an overview of the RIRDC project DAN 145A which is investigating soil texture, EM31 and recharge. This article describes two aspects of the work undertaken since commencement of seasons 1993/94. It presents the how clay content of soil controls recharge during rice growing and how we can predict the soils clay content with the EM31. The article presents clay as a control of recharge and predicting soil clay content. It was concluded that EM31 can detect differences in the amount of clay equally well in dry soil as in wet soil. Salinity has similar effect to moisture content in that it increases the EM reading. If salinity of two soils each with different clay contents increases by the same amount the EM reading of both soils will increase by the same amount.