Services
Hydrology & water balance.
Water is one of the biggest swing factors in a season — and one of the least measured. We turn it into a plan you can act on: when and how much to water each part of a field, where runoff and drainage will cost you, and which fixes are worth doing first.
Where water quietly costs you
Irrigation you didn’t need
Watering to a calendar, or to the driest corner, means fuel, labour and water spent on ground that was already wet enough.
Yield lost to dry spells
The parts of a field that run short first are rarely the parts you’re watching. By the time the crop shows stress, the yield is already gone.
Soil and nutrients washing off
Where rain arrives faster than the ground can take it, you lose topsoil, phosphorus and the cost of replacing them — and you can fail a runoff inspection.
Waterlogging and drainage failures
Low, heavy ground that sits wet delays travel, drowns crop and quietly caps the yield of that block every season.
What you get
- A watering plan for each part of the field — when to irrigate and roughly how much
- A simple risk map showing where runoff and where waterlogging or drainage loss will happen
- A shortlist of fixes, ordered by likely payback — scheduling changes first, then targeted soil work
- The water evidence you need for a Soil Management Plan or a grant or scheme application
- A before-and-after check after any change, so you can see what it actually did
The output, in practice
A field is rarely one thing. We split it into a few zones that behave differently, and each one gets a straight answer:
| Zone | Water in the bank | Days of cover | This week’s call | Watch-outs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The sandy rise | Low — small buffer | ~1 day | Water this block first, a light pass | Water and nutrients drain straight through — don’t over-apply |
| The main body | Comfortable | ~3 days | Hold — check again mid-week | Some runoff risk on the slope in heavy rain |
| The low corner | Full | Not limiting | Hold — it does not need it | Sits wet after rain; the real risk here is waterlogging, not drought |
Illustrative — a three-zone field on one day, to show the shape of what you receive. Behind it is a full soil-physics water balance; you only see the answer.
How we work
- 1
Measure
We put soil-moisture sensors in a few representative spots, walk and sample the field, and pull in local weather and satellite imagery. A day or two on the farm, then the sensors stay in the ground.
- 2
Model
QSoil combines the sensors, the soil survey, the weather and the satellite view into a live picture of the water in each part of the field. You get it as a weekly note, or on your phone if you want the daily detail.
- 3
Act
You get a ranked list of what to change. Better scheduling usually comes first and usually costs nothing. Where the limit is the soil itself — ground that won’t take water in, or a layer holding it off the roots — we target a TerraScape amendment at just those zones.
- 4
Prove
The sensors stay put. After a change we re-check the same measurements and tell you what moved and what didn’t — in the same plain terms, so you can decide whether it paid.
Bring us a field with a water problem.
Tell us what you’re seeing — dry patches, wet corners, runoff, a big irrigation bill — and we’ll scope what it takes to get you a plan.