SoilWaterNow: Soil water nowcasting for mapping plant available water (PAW) across paddocks for improved on-farm decision-making

Abstract

Timely, paddock-scale estimates of plant-available water (PAW) can support crop management in water-limited grain systems. We present the Sydney Soil Water-Energy Balance (SWEB) model, a scalable, physically consistent modelling framework that integrates satellite and climate data with soil properties to estimate crop evapotranspiration and root-zone soil moisture (RZSM) at daily, 30 m resolution. SWEB was validated nationally against different SM monitoring networks across Australia, which demonstrated robust performance across diverse grain-growing environments (correlation coefficients generally ranged from 0.70 to 0.85 for most regions). In future applications, mid-season PAW nowcasts could be combined with water-use-efficiency approaches to estimate water-limited yield potential and inform responsive management decisions, such as nitrogen fertiliser top-up recommendations.