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Recharging

16 Oct 2013 05:42 AM
October 1 is the start of the water year. Since our growing season ends roughly around this time, any precipitation that falls afterwards will go toward recharging soil moisture for the next growing season. The featured chart displays the yearly cycle of root zone soil moisture as estimated by the Iowa Daily Erosion Project. The black line represents the simple average of all the years plotted. Moisture levels start to increase this time of year showing the recharge of soil moisture taking place as there is no longer a crop depleting it. The most substantial recharge takes place during the spring time as rainfall events are more intense and the soil is not frozen.

Voting:
Good: 70
Bad: 7

Tags:   idep   soilmoisture  

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From Iowa Daily Erosion Project

Soaking Rainfall

26 Aug 2012 12:07 PM
The rainfall much of Iowa received this weekend is almost too good to believe! Rainfall totals on Saturday reached 3-4 inches over southwestern Iowa. The featured image is a combination of rainfall estimates and modeled surface water runoff from the storms on Saturday. This model output is from the Iowa Daily Erosion Project found on this website. Areas that are shown picking up 2-3 inches of rain only show less than a half of an inch of runoff. The reason being that the rains feel at a reasonable pace and there is vegetation around to slow down rain drops before they strike the ground. It also helped that the ground was quite thirsty! Heavy rains are continuing on Sunday with Lamoni reporting over 8 inches for the event!

Voting:
Good: 37
Bad: 9

Tags:   idep