Tuesday, 8 November 2005
8

Calibration Method of Dielectric Soil Moisture Sensors Considering the Effect of Salt Concentration.

Tadaomi Saito1, Haruyuki Fujimaki2, and Mitsuhiro Inoue1. (1) Arid Land Research Center, Tottori University, 1390 Hamasaka, Tottori, Japan, (2) University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennoudai, Tsukuba, Japan

In recent years, moisture sensors based on dielectric constant have played very important roles in real-time and nondestructive soil water monitoring. However, they tend to overestimate the soil water content with the increase of salt concentration. To accurately determine water content with dielectric sensors, the concentration-specific calibration would be required. This study proposes a calibration method of dielectric sensors considering the effect of salt concentration. Salt concentration can be measured with a four-electrode electrical conductivity sensor with relatively low cost. We developed calibration equations for both dielectric sensors and a four-electrode sensor. Both sensor output depend on water content and the electrical conductivity of soil solution. We thus solved simultaneous equations. Two different types of commercially available dielectric sensors were calibrated: the ECH2O probe employed the capacitance method (Decagon Devices) and the ThetaProbe-ML2 employed the ADR method (Delta-T Devices). Calibration experiments were carried out using Tottori dune sand samples which were uniformly packed in covered containers at a constant temperature, for NaCl concentrations ranging from 0 to 31.9 ds/m, and for volumetric water content values ranging from 0 to 0.335 cm3/cm3. Results showed that solving simultaneous calibration equations allowed accurate estimations of water content for both the ECH2O Probe and the ThetaProbe. This also means that the combination of the dielectric sensor and the four-electrode sensor enables simultaneous monitoring of water content and salt concentration in the soil. The ECH2O probe was more inexpensive, but showed stronger dependence and nonlinearity on salt concentration than the ThetaProbe. Thus the fitted experimental equations of ECH2O probe were more complex and estimation accuracy of water content was lower than the ThetaProbe. Considering high dependence of the ECH2O probe on salt concentration, the ECH2O probe needs simultaneous use of the electrical conductivity sensor in application to saline soil.

Handout (.pdf format, 1109.0 kb)
Handout (.pdf format, 152.0 kb)

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