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Establishing the First Soil Water Characteristics Curve for the Soils of Prince Edward Island, Canada
1S. J. Cheema, 2A. A. Farooque, 1F. Abbas, 3T. Esau, 2K. Grewal
1. School of Climate Change and Adaptation, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PE C1A 4P3, Canada
2. Faculty of Sustainable Design Engineering, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PE C1A 4P3, Canada
3. Engineering Department, Dalhousie University, Agriculture Campus, Truro, NS B2N 5E3, Canada

Soil water characteristics curve (SWCC), for Prince Edward Island (PEI), is much more needed currently for the sustainable production of agriculture yields. It will not only fulfil the requirements of the province’s farmers for irrigation scheduling but also help the government to decide about permitting the use of groundwater for supplemental irrigation on the island.  A soil water characteristics curve in PEI does not exist to support precision agriculture practices. Precision irrigation provides water and nutrients straight to the roots of each plant in measured doses that keep the root zone at optimal moisture and nutrient levels. The steps would include confirming the existing soil survey maps of PEI with the help of ArcGIS tools. This will help to determine the major soil types of PEI and relate them to their use of cultivating various crops. For crop inventory, the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada land use data of the last three years (2017-2020) will be used to distinguish cropping patterns of PEI with help of the ArcGIS tool. The project aims at establishing soil water characteristic curves for all major soil types of PEI as this has never been done for the island soils before. This task involves two steps. For step 1, the random soil sampling will be conducted from agricultural fields of Kings, Queens, and Prince counties. Approximately 100 samples will be collected for analysis of soil textural class. For step 2, selective soil sampling will be conducted from agricultural fields of one to two major soil types. Approximately, 200 samples will be collected from different places comprising three to five replications for each soil type. Since one curve will involve the readings of water retention at 16-20 varying pressures (i.e., from 0.1 bar to 16 bar), three to five replications mean 60 to 100 samples for each soil type. This will generate enough data for statistical analysis including mean and standard deviations values, later needed for establishing the curves. Accomplishing this task (i.e., the establishment of soil water characteristics curves) will be a novel contribution to the knowledge of agricultural sciences as the soil water characteristic curves do not exist for PEI soils. 

Keyword: Droughts, irrigation scheduling, supplemental irrigation, water resources