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r, J r 000074 The Chieftain, Pueblo, COlD" Monday, April 22, 1996 Page 36 Chieftain photo by Dean Preston Roy Wiley, left, takes extensive notes while Jim Rhoades explains Findtng"'ourwhere salt SP()~S are \ By DEAN PRESTON The Pueblo Chh1tai1l Salinity "guru" Jim Rhoades mapped the Mike Occhiato farm at Lane 36 and U.S. 50 Bypass last Tuesday morning with equip- ment lhat was foreign to the peo- ple v';ho watched, listened, and took riotes. "The equipment works beller in moister soil," Rhoades said. The ficlq".is irrigated by cablegalion me'(l16d but had not been watered siner"going through the dry win- ter:"". r; ~ll. I\dually, three pieces of equip- ment were used in the field to con- YeY'>lnformation to a computer in' a IMge motor home parked at the ed~d of the field. When lhe day's worlo'.~as complel~_ the fi:ld owner had a computer genera led niap of trouble SpOlS in the field. All the field equipment Was de- veloped by the Assessment Re- search of the Agricultural Research Service al the U.S. Sa- linilY Laboratory al Riverside, Calif. Soon, all of it will be pro- d uced in lhe commercial market sector. Rhoades said one piece of equipment features four elec- trodes, each mounted behind a chisel which protecls the elec- trodes. As the lraclor moves across the field, a constanl read- out of e1eclrical conductivity is fed into the computer in the motor home. The equipment is the only one of its type but a California com- pany now has the the prototYpe design and should be able to dehv- er it in the near future for exten- sian offices, soil conservation districts, or larger irrigation-ditch companies to make available for farm mapping. It is exact within one-Ienth of a meter in pointing out lrouble spots but is not exact enou~h for specific amendment applicatIOn 10 lhe soil, he said. A second piece of equipment - the Laserplane - is a stop-and-go spot testing machine which sup- plies vertical readings to coordi. nate with the lateral readings from the continuous readings.. on the first machine, . (In... T'\~rt or thr: ~f':~()t"\r1 mflchine is more sensitive to deeper oil pen- elration than to shallower read- ings. Another part of the equipment is a series of electncal probes which ~an be lowercd. or raised hydrauhcally to prOVide corroborating informalion, When all lhat information is in the computer, a tractor-mounted soil sampler takes cores from identified trouble spots 10 lab test in lhe mobile home. ThaI soil makeup information is added to the other information available. "Already, we have considerable in[ormalion Trom the compuler readout on the Oechiato farm," Richard Rhoades (no relation), Natural Resources Conservation Service district conservalionist in Pueblo, said Wednesday after- noon. Olhcr fields in the area also were mapped during lhe week, Jim Rhoades said "lhe whole package of three pieces of equip- . ment should be available for less than $50,000."