Monday, November 5, 2007
90-18

Comparisons of the Performance of Three Soil Water Potential Sensors at a Forest Catchment.

Danielle Andrews, Xiaobo Zhou, Henry Lin, and Qing Zhu. Crop and Soil Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802

As the driving force of water movement, soil water potential distribution and its temporal change are critical to the understanding and characterization of subsurface water flow directions and pathways. Three soil water potential sensors: 229 water matric potential sensor (Campbell Scientific Inc., Logan, UT), 253 water soil matric potential block (Campbell Scientific Inc., Logan, UT), and Decagon matric potential sensor (Decagon Devices Inc., Pullman, WA), were installed at a variety of locations and depths to monitor the soil water potential dynamics from October 2006 to October 2007. Preliminary results show that within the surface horizon, the Decagon matric potential sensor gave significantly higher matric potential measurements (approximately doubled), than the measurements given by Campbell 229 matric potential sensor under both wet and dry conditions. Under dry conditions both the Campbell 229 and the Decagon matric potential sensors showed good responses to the rainfall events and correlated significantly well, while under wetter conditions the Decagon matric potential sensors worked better than the Campbell sensors.

Back to Symposium--Advancing Measurement Techniques and Modeling Synergy for Environmental Soils Research in Space and Time: III
Back to S01 Soil Physics

Back to The ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meetings (November 4-8, 2007)