Field Ops: Soil Temperature
Vitidore’s field operations team collects a variety of field data, for the purpose of providing helpful information to farmers as well as to help build our machine-learning system for modeling soil carbon. This is part of a series about what we do and how it furthers the goals of sustainable agriculture.
Wine grapes in California typically experience bud break (the first stage of the annual vine growth cycle) between March and April. This process is triggered in part by rising seasonal air temperatures and could also potentially be influenced by the local temperature of the soil beneath the vines. Notably, unusually high temperatures in late winter could trigger a premature bud break and result in an increased risk to the crop due to subsequent frost events and other disruptions that might possibly lead to an outright destruction of that year’s crop.
Vitidore first began to keep tabs on this issue while researching and trialing the Oakville bluegrass cover crop, hypothesizing that the presence of the perennial grass between rows or under vine could provide insulation and buffer the soil against rapid changes in temperature. If this were to prove true, it could potentially keep the winegrape crop below the threshold for triggering an early bud break.
Later in the growing season there is also some evidence from greenhouse studies that a switch from warm to cool soil temperatures can possibly reduce the mobilization of carbohydrates from roots to shoots resulting in more storage belowground and less utilization above ground. This would have a possible major impact on vine vigor, fruitfulness, and biomass production in the following season.....Stay tuned!
In order to test this hypothesis, Vitidore has installed OnSet soil temperature sensors at three vineyards in Sonoma and Napa counties to take readings of fields planted with Oakville bluegrass and a control. In addition to measuring temperatures during bud break, we have begun to monitor additional sites during the summer growing season to compare any differences in temperature between Oakville bluegrass plantings and conventionally-tilled vineyards, assessing the effect on vines and management timing.
Along with analyzing the temperature data, this project serves as a pilot for determining whether the sensors are a useful and cost-effective solution that can be incorporated into additional field sites and our machine learning modeling.
