A pair of online instructional sessions over the next couple of weeks are designed to help farmers and other producers get the most out of some important crop information tools.
Two webinars — on the Soil Information Viewer and the Alberta Climate Information Services — will be presented by Alberta Agriculture and Forestry (AF) on Feb. 22 and Mar. 1 at 10 a.m. respectively, to highlight improvements that have been made to the programs.
“We’ve long had a number of useful tools available on our website,” explained Harry Brook, an AF crop information specialist in Stettler.
“Two of the most popular, the Soil Information Viewer and the Alberta Climate Information Service, have recently been upgraded and expanded. The webinars will highlight some of the new functions of these two tools.”
The soil information viewer provides details on soils on any farmed land in the province, a compilation of information from over the past 100 years.
“The viewer is very popular with a wide diversity of people. It now also gives a complete description of each soil that’s present on a parcel of land. A lot of real estate, reclamation and agricultural users find this site has valuable information for them,” Brook said.
Meanwhile, the other tool provides province-wide historical climate and weather information through the network of Alberta’s 350 weather stations. Those stations track a variety of elements from corn heat units and soil temperatures to net precipitation and wind speeds.
“The updated program now covers 50 years or more of weather data,” added Brook.
Both webinars will begin at 10 a.m. on the respective days and participants will need to register, but both webinars will also be posted to the AF website for later viewing.
To register for the webinars, head to www.agric.gov.ab.ca and use the search function to locate the page. As well, for more information on the webinar, the tools or if you have any questions, call the Alberta Ag-Info Centre at 310-FARM (3276).