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 Modeling Approach

A direct sensing approach will probably work for situations where large uniform blocks of plants are grown, since the water requirement in this production scenario is very uniform and somewhat predictable.

If we use a 'common-sense' approach, we can place a number of sensors to capture the known variability in this block, and use the average from a number of sensors to base our decision upon when to irrigate.

However, there are many instances in container and field production nurseries, where blocks contain different species, with different water requirements (due to species differences) and which are at different stages of growth.

There is also a question of scale: many large operations cover many 100's of acres, which becomes cost-prohibitive to sense.

For this reason, we are also using modeling approaches, to be able to predict water use over large areas using a relatively small sensor network (using "indicator" species). In this way, we will be able to more accurately predict when to irrigate large blocks of trees and shrubs.