Xiaoyuan Geng
Head Scientist
Agri-Food
Canada

Biography
Xiaoyuan Geng is a head scientist and leads Canadian national soil and landscape framework renewal and application. He has experienced geospatial information system design, development and testing over the years. He is a key contributor to OGC WPS and TJS standards.

Abstract
Architecture, Implementation and Application of Soil Moisture in-situ Sensor Network Across Canadian Agricultural Landscapes

Integrated information systems which are capable of real-time monitoring of agri-environment variables and processes are critical for agriculture water management issues such as automated irrigation scheduling (Vellidis et al., 2008); crop yield monitoring, soil moisture monitoring (Moghaddam et al., 2007), and calibration and validation of space-borne earth observation measures (Teillet et al., 2007). In situ sensor networks covering various geographical and temporal scales are an important source of information that is often used for scientific modeling, agricultural management and decision making. With specific business requirements for validation of RADARSAT-2 and Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission derived soil moisture products, a specialized in-situ sensor network has been designed, implemented and used across Canadian agricultural regions involving the systematic integration of sensing, communications, computing and interoperable distribution. While handling the sustainability and scalability of this in-situ sensor network for anticipated new business requirements, the objective of this paper is to share lessons learned through the design, implementation and use of this live in-situ sensor network. Selected soil moisture sensors along with needed data recording and transmission devices are validated before field installation. A field guide for in-situ sensor installation and site characterization is developed both for project and external users. Sensor calibration options have been studied and evaluated. Measurements of each of the in-situ sensors are calibrated using site specific soil (texture) information. Recent advances and low-cost of wireless communication technologies allows the measured in-situ data transmitted to central offices near real time. Distributed computing platforms including Cloud virtual server are used for streamlined data processing and distribution. Sensor Observation Service (SOS) of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard is used for interoperable data distribution (Liang et al. 2005). The quality controlled and calibrated in-situ soil moisture data are used by both Canadian researchers and the SMAP mission team of NASA.