Illinois Climate Network expands thanks to grant from The Lumpkin Family Foundation
A new monitoring station installed recently in Coles County provides previously unavailable local, real-time weather, soil, and water data used by farmers, weather forecasters, industry, policymakers, and others.
The station is part of the Illinois Climate Network. The network has monitored weather and soil conditions since the late 1980s and operates 19 other stations across Illinois. This is the first new station added to the network in more than 20 years.
“We are grateful for the support of The Lumpkin Family Foundation that made this station possible,” said Jennie Atkins, Water and Atmospheric Resources Monitoring Program manager at the Illinois State Water Survey. “And we are excited to partner with communities and organizations in Coles County.”
The $56,000 project to build the new station was funded by a grant from The Lumpkin Family Foundation. The foundation’s grants and programs support healthy, sustainable communities, primarily in rural east central Illinois.
"Access to reliable, local data helps communities make informed decisions about agriculture, water resources, and public safety,” Executive Director Heidi Dusek said. “The Lumpkin Family Foundation is proud to support the Illinois State Water Survey's new monitoring station in Coles County, which will provide valuable information to farmers, researchers, forecasters, and community leaders. Investments like this strengthen the long-term resilience and sustainability of rural east central Illinois."
Illinois Climate Network will provide a wealth of data not measured by other monitoring stations. The new station fills a gap in the network and will provide information not previously available for Coles County by measuring soil temperature, soil moisture, water table levels, air temperature inversions, and solar radiation, which is used to calculate evapotranspiration.
“Before now, our closest station was in Champaign and there was no publicly available source for data such as soil moisture and solar radiation,” Atkins said.
The new station, which began monitoring in December, collects weather data every five minutes and soil and water table data each hour. This data is valuable for irrigation planning, planting decisions, pesticide spraying, ecology research, flood and severe weather forecasting, drought monitoring, and emergency planning.
The data is available for free online.
The station sits on private farmland, generously provided by an agricultural producer who had been using data from what was previously the nearest station — 45 miles away.
Thousands of agricultural producers and agricultural businesses use this data, as well as landscapers, engineers, consultants, educators, and researchers. Illinois Climate Network also partners with outside organizations to provide data for tools and analysis, including the National Weather Service, which receives real-time data from the network for severe weather forecasting.
The Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign provides scientific expertise and transformative research to the people of Illinois and beyond. PRI is home to the five state scientific surveys: the Illinois Natural History Survey, Illinois State Archaeological Survey, Illinois State Geological Survey, Illinois State Water Survey, and Illinois Sustainable Technology Center.
Media contacts
Jennie Atkins, ISWS, 217-333-4966, jatkins@illinois.edu
Laura Weisskopf Bleill, PRI, 217-417-6671, lwbleill@illinois.edu