An Examination of Soil Moisture Estimation Using Ground Penetrating Radar in Desert Steppe

Yizhu Lu,Wenlong Song,Xuefeng Wang,Jingxuan Lu,Yanan Tan

doi:10.3390/w9070521

Abstract

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a new technique of rapid soil moisture measurement, which is an important approach to measure soil moisture at the intermediate scale. To test the applicability of GPR method for soil moisture in desert steppe, we used the common-mid point (CMP) method and fixed offset (FO) method to evaluate the influence factors and the accuracy of GPR measurement with gravimetric soil moisture measurements. The experiments showed that Topp’s equation is more suitable than Roth’s equation for processing the GPR data in desert steppe and the soil moisture measurements by GPR had high accuracy by either CMP method or FO method. To a certain extent, the vegetation coverage affects the measurement precision and the soil moisture profile. The precipitation can reduce the effective sampling depth of the ground wave from 0.1 m to 0.05 m. The results revealed that GPR has the advantages of high measurement accuracy, easy movement, simple operation, and no damage to the soil layer structure.

Highlights

Soil water is the basis of vegetation development, and soil moisture is an important indicator of climate, hydrology, ecology, and agriculture
The results revealed that Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has the advantages of high measurement accuracy, easy movement, simple operation, and no damage to the soil layer structure
Soil moisture measured by gravimetric method was used as the standard value to compare the

Summary

Introduction

Soil water is the basis of vegetation development, and soil moisture is an important indicator of climate, hydrology, ecology, and agriculture. The monitoring of soil moisture in desert steppe is important to protect grassland vegetation, prevent desertification, improve the ecological environment, and provide the basis for grazing control and the prevention of grassland degradation. The data determined by these methods can reflect the soil moisture of the observation point accurately, but it is time-consuming and laborious with destructive problems to the soil structure. The intermediate scale method includes GPR and CRS. These are non-hazardous, non-contact, and non-destructive measurement methods that develop rapidly. The point scale methods of measuring soil moisture are not capable of collecting large scale data rapidly. The remote sensing methods have the advantage of large coverage and repeated observations on a regular basis but at coarse scales [1]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion