On Various Soil Moisture Measurement Techniques Available in the Literature

Abstract

The sustainability and health of soil associated with its productivity and health are closely related to soil moisture. The amount of water or moisture in the soil is an important parameter in the mobility of nutrients in the soil, in soil reclamation studies, and in the washing-transportation and mixing of fertilizers and other chemicals applied to the soil into the ground water. On the other hand, it has become important today not only to minimize water consumption but also to accurately measure the amount of moisture in the soil so that proper amount of water that the plant needs can be circulated to the root zone of the plant. In this context, information was given about various measurement methods for determining soil moisture (direct and indirect - thanks to correlations) existing in the literature, and among these studies, especially the studies on microwave methods were examined. Comparison results of the dielectric constant values obtained for three different soil samples with different gravimetric volumetric moisture rates by one of the calibration-independent non-resonant microwave measurement methods, which has a high application potential and is different from the existing calibration-requiring microwave measurement methods, and the dielectric constant values predicted by the Mironov model in the literature are presented. The comparison result showed that this new type of microwave measurement method has a high potential for measuring the moisture value of soil samples