A Non-invasive Approach to Monitor Variability of Soil Water Content with Electromagnetic Methods

An accurate and high-resolution description of the spatial variability of soil water content at the field scale and the distribution of water in the unsaturated zone requires a large number of measurements. Financial and time constraints limit the numbers of measurement locations; thus the standard approach for monitoring could lead to a large degree of uncertainty in spatial predictions. We test in a parcel of bare soil an alternative approach based on ground-based geophysical techniques, by comparing the monitoring of the soil water content obtained from the Electrical Resisitivity Imaging and the Ground Penetrating Radar with the variability maps estimated from the interpolation of soil water contents measured in different locations with capacitance probes. The agreement is good and the integration of the techniques is promising.