Abstract
Preservation of green infrastructure (GI) needs continuous monitoring of soil moisture. Moisture content in soil is generally interpreted on the basis electrical conductivity (EC), soil temperature and relative humidity (RH). However, validity of previous approaches to interpret moisture content in urban landscape was rarely investigated. There is a need to relate the moisture content with other parameters (EC, temperature and RH) to economize the sensor installation. This study aims to quantify the dynamics of the above-mentioned parameters in an urban green space, and to further develop correlations between moisture content and other parameters (EC, temperature and RH). An integrated field monitoring and statistical modelling approach were adopted to achieve the objective. Four distinct sites comprising treed (younger and mature tree), grassed and bare soil were selected for investigation. Field monitoring was conducted for two months to measure four parameters. This was followed by statistical modelling by artificial neural networks (ANN). Correlations were developed for estimating soil moisture as a function of other parameters for the selected sites. Irrespective of the type of site, EC was found to be the most significant parameter affecting soil moisture, followed by RH and soil temperature. This correlation with EC is found to be stronger in vegetated soil as compared to that without vegetation. The correlations of soil temperature with water content do not have a conclusive trend. A considerable increase in temperature was not found due to the subsequent drying of soil after rainfall. A normal distribution function was found from the uncertainty analysis of soil moisture in the case of treed soil, whereas soil moisture was observed to follow a skewed distribution in the bare and grassed soils.
Highlights
Green infrastructure (GI), such as green roofs, lawns, parks and biofiltration units, are an economic, environmentally friendly and resilient approach to managing storm water [1,2,3]
Changes in Soil Moisture Content, Electrical Conductivity and Temperature in bare soil and soils vegetated with Trees are discussed
The present study investigates the relationship between the water content of soil and other parameters, namely electrical conductivity (EC), temperature and relative humidity (RH)
Summary
Green infrastructure (GI), such as green roofs, lawns, parks and biofiltration units, are an economic, environmentally friendly and resilient approach to managing storm water [1,2,3]. GI mainly utilizes vegetated soil to reinstate biological processes that are required for its preservation [6,7,8,9]. The soil–plant–atmosphere interaction is the most important process that is frequently investigated by scientific communities around the world in GI [10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. A few studies [17,18,19,20] report that water-holding capacity increases due to the presence of roots [18]. The reason for this may be blockage of pores due to root permeation. Accurate measurements of moisture content in GI is vital to analyse evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge and cloud formation (i.e., soil–plant–atmosphere interaction [24,25])
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