July 25, 2002

New Applications and Enhanced Coverage for NDAWN

A newly-updated North Dakota State University Web site provides hourly and daily weather data and helps the region’s farmers predict crop insect and disease development. The new North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network (NDAWN) Web site has been under development for 18 months and is now open to the public at www.ndawn.ndsu.nodak.edu.

Although still being developed, this site has many new features and applications and is far more user-friendly according to John Enz, agricultural climatologist at North Dakota State University.

"Hourly and daily weather data are useful for many purposes, but our new applications use these data to predict crop, insect, and disease development," Enz says. "The ultimate goal is provide information about susceptible crop stages, disease epidemics, and insect infestations in time for producers to take mitigating or corrective action. I like to think of this as ‘actually doing something about the weather’."

"What is really exciting to me is that users can now easily download weather or application data," Enz says. "These data can be easily imported into a spreadsheet or data base program."

The potato disease forecaster which quantifies infection values for potato late blight was added to the NDAWN web site this spring. Potato producers can find maps showing the accumulation of late blight severity values, favorable days, and/or P-days since emergence, or totals for just the past two days. By clicking on a station, the user sees a table that shows the daily and accumulated values for the entire season. A direct link to NDSU’s potato late blight web site which has interpretations and recommendations are provided. The model was developed by Neil Gudmestad and Gary Secor, NDSU plant pathologists, who also maintain the potato web site and late blight hotline.

The newest addition to the NDAWN Web site is the wheat growth stage estimator. "By entering a location and planting date, a wheat grower can obtain a table displaying daily and accumulated growing degree days (GDD) and an estimated HAUN stage for each day since planting," Enz says. Growth stages determine what type of pesticides can be applied so they provide valuable management information. Maps and tables of accumulated growing degree days and growth stages are also available. Currently work is underway to add a wheat midge model which will identify periods when the wheat is vulnerable to midge.

Len Francl, NDSU plant pathologis, has added several new features to the small grain disease forecasting system which is also new to the site, Enz says. This system identifies days with favorable conditions for development of tan spot, Septoria blotch, leaf rust, scab. Producers choose a nearby NDAWN location and a wheat growth stage to get results for their area. New features include maps of spore counts and two new scab forecasting models.

The Northern Canola Growers Association, the Minnesota Canola Council, and the Canola Council of Canada have teamed up to provide canola growers with the Sclerotinia Disease Forecasting System. This system uses data from nearly all NDAWN stations to provide North Dakota and Minnesota producers with Sclerotinia development information so they can decide if fungicide applications are necessary. Art Lamey, NDSU plant pathologist emeritus is the coordinator. A link to the risk maps is available on the NDAWN system.

Also available on the NDAWN web site are crop water use maps and tables for potatoes, corn, dry beans, wheat, barley, sugar beets, soybeans, sunflowers, alfalfa and turf grass. A new feature this year is a map showing the water deficit across the state. This application was developed by Tom Scherer, NDSU agricultural engineer.

"Hopefully we will see more and more disease, insect and crop prediction models on the Web site in the future," Enz says. "Research scientists at NDSU are currently developing new applications and we will try to add as many as possible for the next growing season. In addition, there will be numerous new data summarization, analysis, and plotting features available for both weather and application data. It is exciting to see the data base/web system rapidly progressing. The development of a system that provides weather data and management information has been my dream for the past 5 or 6 years."

NDAWN coverage has greatly improved during the past 2 years. A void was filled in northwestern North Dakota with new stations at Berthold, Crosby, Ross, and Plaza. Other holes were filled with new stations at Wishek, Fingal, Karlsruhe, and Wahpeton. And a station was recently installed at the new irrigated potato research site near Tappen.

"The idea for the NDAWN system arose from the 1988 drought that affected all of North Dakota," Enz says. "At that time there was tremendous demand for current weather information and it was only available at the major forecasting stations. In 1989 I obtained a grant and we started NDAWN with six stations that were located at Research/Extension Centers in the state. Now we have a total of 63 stations. All are connected to phone lines so yesterdays data are available today."

All NDAWN station equipment and annual non-labor maintenance costs of $950 per station are funded by gifts and grants from federal and state agencies, agribusinesses, commodity organizations, and producers. For more information about the new web site go to www.ndawn.ndsu.nodak.edu.

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Source: John Enz, (701) 231-8576, john.enz@ndsu.nodak.edu
Editor: Rich Mattern (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu