Abstract
Over the last few years high-resolution geophysical techniques, in particular ground-penetrating radar (GPR), have been used in agricultural applications for assessing soil water content variation in a non-invasive way. However, the wide use of GPR is greatly limited by the data processing complexity. In this paper, a quantitative analysis of GPR data is proposed. The data were collected with 250, 600 and 1600 MHz antennas in a gravelly soil located in south-eastern Italy. The objectives were: (1) to investigate the impact of data processing on radar signals; (2) to select a quick, efficient and error-effective data processing for detecting subsurface features; (3) to examine the response of GPR as a function of operating frequency, by using statistical and geostatistical techniques. Six data processing sequences with an increasing level of complexity were applied. The results showed that the type and range of spatial structures of GPR data did not depend on data processing at a given frequency. It was also evident that the noise tended to decrease with the complexity of processing, then the most error-effective procedure was selected. The results highlight the critical importance of the antenna frequency and of the spatial scale of soil/subsoil processes being investigated.
Highlights
The assessment of soil water content (SWC) variation on both spatial and temporal scales is fundamental in many research areas and applications, such as land use planning, irrigation management, ecological and hydrological modelling
Geostatistical modelling of radar amplitude was affected by data processing only for the estimated parameters of nugget effect and partial sill
In order to investigate the response of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) as a function of operating frequency, we restricted the geostatistical analysis only to the data processed according to the third procedure
Summary
The assessment of soil water content (SWC) variation on both spatial and temporal scales is fundamental in many research areas and applications, such as land use planning, irrigation management, ecological and hydrological modelling. A great deal of research has gone into the development of novel SWC techniques capable of providing measurement of a physical variable that is a surrogate for SWC across a wide range of spatial scales. The use of these methods was largely motivated by the need for reliable, quick and easy measurements of soil parameters at field and landscape spatial extents. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is one of the geophysical techniques, currently used in agricultural research and application to monitor shallow soil water content [3,4,5,6]. A GPR system consists of an arrangement of antennas that can emit and receive electromagnetic pulses in the radar frequency range of 1 MHz to a few GHz
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