Why Should I Use a Lysimeter?

Protecting Ground Water from Pollution

The use of lysimeters as a preventative tool is very familiar to those working to protect shallow groundwater resources from pollution by pesticides, nitrates, and pollutants. It is easier and less expensive and more logical to use a lysimeter to detect potential contaminants before these reach the resource we want to protect. Expensive monitoring or remediation wells after the ground waters become polluted is certainly no sensible solution. Today, lysimeters are used extensively under landfills, storage tanks, land farms, with municipalities, industry, agriculture, and governmental agencies all working to protect ground water from pollution. What is perhaps less understood is the part lysimeters can play as a diagnostic tool in the development of "best management practices" that result in premium crops.

Crop Production and Pore Liquid Content

Pore water (the water a plant uses) is affected by its water soluble constituents, both natural and man-made. Even slightly soluble elements, like selenium or copper, can have a dramatic effect on plant crop vitality. Crop health and the ability to produce fruit, seed, or bulk will in large part be determined by the nutritional environment created by the percolating pore liquids surrounding a plant's roots. A soil water sampler, also known as a lysimeter, is the most effective tool to measure and monitor pore liquid contents that will directly affect crop production and vitality.

Water Quality

Water Quality is an important factor for satisfactory crop production. A lysimeter can provide vital information about the difference between the supply water (from either wells or municipality sources) and the pore water after an irrigation cycle. Substantial changes to the source water affecting crop production can be due to soil/mineral exchange capacities, water or soil pH, evaporation patterns and seasonal effects that may take place within the soil. A lysimeter provides an inexpensive way to gather and measure the differences between water supplies used in irrigations and the final soil solution concentration. Being able to measure and develop those water relationships can provide the knowledge necessary to optimize plant nutritional needs independent of irrigation water quality.

Fertilizer Management

Proper care and feeding are as necessary to plants as humans. A lysimeter allows for the quantitative determination of what's working well now, giving you the ability to replicate or introduce those same conditions throughout the crop. In the case of a golf course, the trees, roughs, fairways, and greens all have different feeding habits and nutritional needs. The knowledge gained by measuring and monitoring pore liquids associated with each specialty crop segment will be crucial to the understanding and development of best management practices for each of those crop segments.

Fertilizers and pesticides move in the soil. The more important facts for consideration are: "Is it too much?" or "Is it being used too often?" A group of lysimeters at 3-4 depths can quantify pore fluid contents and movements. A multiple group of lysimeters at 3-4 depths can, for example, help determine fertilizer or herbicide penetration, dilutions due to depth or root uptake and the effectiveness of "timed" release supplements. Potentially harmful crop inclusions such as pesticide residues or leached heavy metals can also be monitored and measured in a similar manner as they move and are modified through the soil profile.

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