The increased uncertainty of rainfall patterns and the increased ability to irrigate on-demand creates a demand for decision support to the farmer. As irrigation is a costly activity, the decision is not easily made. There are basically two components in this decision making process, the forward component (is it going to rain soon?) and the backward component (how much water is left in the soil?). While the first is the domain of meterological services, the latter becomes more and more relevant, in particular to understand the spatial variability of soil moisture content which dictates the spatial variability in crop water need. A good map of soil moisture provides farmers an important view on the status of their fields and crops and helps him decide and prioritise.
Typical customers are farmers that need irrigation water to control their crop yields and quality, and in particular in some high-value crops such as vineyards, fruit trees, horticulture (vegetables), sweet onions and other cash crops.
Besides agriculture, other customers can benefit from our soil moisture maps. Irrigation water management is a major issue where a lot of costs are involved that can be reduced. Monitoring the soil moisture content is of prime importance to understand when excess rainfall will cause water logging and/or flooding. Flooded areas can also be detected by measuring 100 percent water saturation content, even with a vegetable cover (bushes, grass, trees).
MISTRALE will also look into projects in other domains like river basin management, hydro-power catchment assessments, environmental assessments, flooding risk- and disaster management and other relevant domains.