Riverine Plains is investigating how on-farm weather stations and moisture probes can better support communities, farmers and emergency services to prepare and respond to fire and flood emergencies.
The work is being conducted through the ‘More Robust Weather Station Network to Support Climate Resilience’ project, which recently received grant funding from the Australian Government.
Having real-time climate information is important for planning weather-sensitive operations such as sowing, spraying, harvesting or irrigation scheduling.
Given official Bureau of Meteorology weather stations can be located up to 200km apart, farmers often fill in the gaps by installing on-farm weather stations to monitor temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, rainfall and soil moisture on their farms.
Riverine Plains, along with project partners Birchip Cropping Group, Central West Farming Systems, FarmLink and Holbrook Landcare network, collectively manage a network of over 80 on-farm weather stations and soil moisture probes across Southern Australia and the project is looking at ways to improve accessibility by combining these separate networks into a single platform, while ensuring data is collected and presented in a way that meets the needs of users.
The project will also look at long-term funding for the sites and will investigate alternative ways to transmit data where mobile coverage is poor.
With a warming climate likely to increase the frequency and severity of extreme climatic events, having greater public access to existing on-farm weather station networks has the potential to assist communities and emergency services identify and manage high risk situations.
For further information on this project, please contact Riverine Plains Project Officer Kate Coffey on phone (03) 5744 1713 or email kate@riverineplains.org.au
Access the Riverine Plains’ network of weather stations and soil moisture probes.
The More Robust Weather Station Network to Support Climate Resilience project received grant funding from the Australian Government.