Physical Research
Objective
One of the primary research tasks of the PV-SuCCESS project is to collect physical, chemical, and biological field data at solar facility sites and provide a detailed assessment of soil characteristics. This information will be incorporated into the integrated framework to help decision makers understand the implications to soil health when evaluating solar development options in both site selection and site design.
Dr. David Mulla from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Soil, Water, and Climate is leading the physical research. Jake Galzki, a research professional also with the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, is conducting field research and data collection.
The information contained on this page has been provided by Dr. Mulla and his team.
Research Study Area
At the end of 2024, instrumentation has been installed and data collection has begun at six solar farms, five of which are in Minnesota, and the sixth in New York. Minnesota sites are located near the cities of Atwater, Becker, Chisago, Mankato, and Ramsey. The sixth site is located near Ithaca, New York. Two additional sites will be added in the spring of 2025 in Strobus, Wisconsin, and Osage, Iowa.
All sites will be instrumented for continuous soil moisture measurements under solar panels, between arrays of panels, and at the panel drip edge to characterize soil water interactions at these unique locations. Stratified grid sampling will be performed to analyze biological and chemical soil properties. Sites will be sampled and monitored for a duration of three years.
Analyzing Soil Properties
The soil properties likely to be of interest for soil health monitoring include the following:
The data collection plan will evaluate soil health characteristics at ground-mounted solar PV sites and evaluate rooting zone changes in soil carbon.
The table below summarizes the sampling parameters schedule for each research site.
The field research will also evaluate surface water quality impacts and groundwater impacts.
In addition to real-time monitoring of soil moisture to assess surface water impacts, five Minnesota sites have each been instrumented with six suction lysimeters at a depth of 30 cm to assess nitrogen leaching in groundwater.
The project will evaluate surface and groundwater quality impacts by building on the PV-SMaRT Solar Runoff Calculator. While the PV-SuCCESS project covers a three-year data collection period, five of the sites were included in the PV-SMaRT project, so the team will be able to include an additional five years of previously collected data.
Additional resources can be found on the Resources page.