Journal of Hydrology (2008) 348, 442– 451

available at www.sciencedirect.com

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhydrol

Field measurements of topsoil moisture profiles

by vertical TDR probes
Roberto Greco *, Andrea Guida

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, CIRIAM – Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca in Ingegneria Ambientale,

Seconda Università di Napoli, Via Roma 29, 81031 Aversa (CE), Italy

Received 27 July 2006; received in revised form 27 July 2007; accepted 10 October 2007

KEYWORDS Summary A recently developed inverse method for the estimation of water content pro-
Time domain files from single time domain reflectometry (TDR) waveforms in laboratory has been
reflectometry; adapted and applied to field measurements of topsoil moisture profiles in a pyroclastic
Moisture profiles; sandy loam. Three metallic probes of the lengths of 30 cm, 45 cm and 60 cm were verti-
Inverse problems; cally installed in an experimental field for the measurement of vertical water content pro-
Infiltration; files. One 15 cm long probe was inserted vertically into soil surface and five 10.5 cm long
Evaporation; probes were buried horizontally at various depths for the measurement of local values of
Field monitoring mean water content by means of the classical TDR approach. The experimental campaign
lasted 28 days, during which daily rainfall heights and daily maximum and minimum tem-
peratures were measured at the experimental field. TDR waveforms acquisition was car-
ried out twice a day. The agreement between local volumetric water content
measurements and vertical profiles was in general satisfactory, although some of the ver-
tical profiles failed in detecting a layer with systematically smaller water content values
indicated by the horizontal probe buried at the depth of 30 cm below soil surface. Such
small water content values could be probably ascribed to the presence of a large amount
of pumice stones in the soil around that depth, affecting the water content measured by
TDR probes and thus increasing estimated moisture spatial variability.
ª 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Introduction tions with relatively small disturbance to the investigated

Time domain reflectometry (TDR) has been widely used in
the last decades for monitoring topsoil water content. In-
deed, TDR provides easy and cheap water content estima-
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Roberto.Greco@unina2.it (R. Greco).
soil. TDR measurement of soil water content, based on
the strong correlation observed between relative dielectric
permittivity of wet soil and its volumetric water content h
(Campbell, 1990), consists of measuring travel time Tp of
an electromagnetic pulse along a metallic waveguide of
known length Lp inserted into the soil. The volume averaged
value of soil relative dielectric permittivity er, affecting the

0022-1694/$ - see front matter ª 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2007.10.013
Field measurements of topsoil moisture profiles by vertical TDR probes
velocity of propagation of electromagnetic waves along the
metallic waveguide, is given by (Topp et al., 1980)
 2
c0 T p
er ¼ : ð1Þ
2Lp
In Eq. (1) c0 is the propagation velocity of electromagnetic
waves in the vacuum space.
Several expressions of the relationship between er and h
have been proposed, empirically stated (Topp et al., 1980)
as well as based on semi-analytical approach to dielectric
mixing models (Roth et al., 1990; Whalley, 1993; Heimova-
ara et al., 1994).
So far, TDR field applications suffered the limitation due
to the capability of the technique of estimating only the
mean water content in the volume investigated by the
probe. Whereas the knowledge of non-homogeneous verti-
cal water content profiles was needed, it was necessary to
install either several vertical probes of different length or
several horizontal probes placed in the soil at different
depths, in both cases strongly increasing soil disturbance
as well as the complexity of the measurements. For the sake
of brevity, from now on the TDR measurements techniques
providing the volume averaged water content will be re-
ferred to as ‘classical’ TDR approach.
Several studies have been recently dedicated to the devel-
opment of inversion methods aimed to extract more informa-
tion from TDR waveforms, in some cases concerning soil
dielectric properties (Heimovaara, 2001; Weerts et al.,
2001; Lin, 2003), in others dealing with estimating non-homo-
geneous moisture profiles along the probe axis. A common
feature of all these methods is that the electromagnetic tran-
sient through the wet soil along the metallic probe is mathe-
matically modeled, assuming that the unknown soil
properties correspond to the best agreement between simu-
lated and measured waveforms. In some cases the soil is mod-
eled as a series of small layers with different dielectric
properties, and the waveform is obtained as the result of
the superposition of multiple reflections arising from imped-
ance discontinuities between the layers (Nguyen et al., 1997;
Todoroff et al., 1998; Heimovaara, 2001; Moret et al., 2006).
Other methods consider the dielectric properties of the soil as
smoothly variable along probe axis (Greco, 1999; Schlaeger
et al., 2001; Oswald et al., 2003; Greco, 2006).
So far, the retrieval of non-homogeneous water content
profiles along TDR probes has been successfully applied only
under controlled laboratory conditions. Aim of this paper is
testing the applicability to field measurements of an inverse
method for the estimation of water content profiles along
vertical TDR waveguides, recently applied in laboratory to
a sample of homogeneous soil with hydraulic boundary con-
ditions leading to monotonic moisture distributions (Greco,
2006). In this paper, the inverse method has been adapted
and applied to measurements of vertical water content pro-
files in an experimental field where non-monotonic moisture
profiles could be observed in the topsoil.
Materials and methods
Soil moisture inverse profiling by TDR
The inverse method for retrieving moisture profiles along
TDR probes by Greco (2006) is here briefly described. The
443
propagation of the electromagnetic pulse along a one
dimensional transmission line may be expressed in terms
of electric voltage V(x, t) and electric current i(x, t) by
means of the so-called telegraph equations (Ramo et al.,
1994):
8
< @i þ 1 @V þ RðxÞ i ¼ 0;
@t LðxÞ @x LðxÞ
ð2Þ
: @V þ 1 @i þ GðxÞ V ¼ dðx  x~Þ½1  expðbtÞ:
@t CðxÞ @x CðxÞ
In Eq. (2), R, L, G and C represent, respectively, resistance,
inductance, transverse conductance and capacitance of
transmission line unit length; the forcing term at RHS of
the second equation represents the voltage transient im-
posed by the generator, with parameter b depending on
emitted pulse rise time; the Dirac function d locates the
forcing term at the abscissa x~ representing transmission line
origin.
In TDR applications to soil moisture determination, the
transmission line along which the electromagnetic pulse
propagates is typically constituted by a coaxial cable and
a metallic probe buried into the soil. At frequencies mostly
contributing to TDR waveforms, roughly ranging between
20 kHz and 1.5 GHz (Heimovaara, 1994), R and L may be as-
sumed constant along a metallic probe of given geometry,
while C(x) and G(x) depend, respectively, on relative dielec-
tric permittivity er(x) and electrical conductivity r(x) of the
soil, both in turn depending on water content distribution
h(x).
The retrieval of the unknown moisture profile along TDR
probe implies the resolution of the inverse problem, consist-
ing in finding the coefficients C(x) and G(x) for which the
integration of Eq. (2) gives rise to simulated voltage at a
generic abscissa x, Vðx; tÞ, closest to a given experimental
waveform Vexp(t). This issue is achieved by minimizing the
objective function W defined as a measure of the distance
between simulated and experimental waveforms:
(R T )1=2
0
exp
½V exp ðtÞ  V½x; t; CðhðxÞÞ; GðhðxÞÞ2 dt
W½hðxÞ ¼ R T exp :
0
V exp ðtÞ2 dt
ð3Þ
For the laboratory application, the unknown moisture pro-
file was parameterized according to a monotonic functional
form with four parameters to be determined.
Therefore, the retrieval of the unknown moisture profile
reduced to the identification of four parameters of the cho-
sen functional form.
In this paper, the above described inverse method has
been applied to the retrieval of water content profiles in a
pyroclastic soil subject to natural infiltration and evapora-
tion transients in the field. In this case, a monotonic func-
tional form for describing moisture distribution could not
be a priori assumed. Therefore, in order to let the unknown
moisture profile to be freely determined without imposing
any predefined functional form, water content distribution
has been schematized with a broken line formed by N seg-
ments of length Dx = L/N, the parameters being the values
hi assumed in N + 1 equidistant vertices.
With this choice, whereas a too large number N of
segments is chosen, the inverse problem may likely turn
to be ill-posed, with multiple minima of the objective
444 R. Greco, A. Guida

function, which would hamper unknown moisture profile
retrieval.
However, the length Dx of a segment has to be larger
than the effective spatial resolution of the TDR instrument,
in turn related to the frequency content of the voltage
pulse. A rough estimate of the spatial resolution can be
made by considering signal rise time tr, usually defined as
the time for the signal to rise from 10% to 90% of its final va-
lue (Oswald et al., 2003):
c0 tr
Dx min ¼ : ð4Þ
4e1=2
r three of the samples, all falling within sandy loam limits
Energy dissipations, due either to electrical conductivity or
to dielectric relaxation, mainly reduce signal power at high
frequencies (Robinson et al., 2003), smoothing the front of
the voltage pulse propagating along the probe: the rise time
of 200 ps of the pulse emitted by Tektronix 1502C cable tes-
ter used for the experiments extends up to nearly 1 ns for
the pulse reflected at the end of the longer metallic probe
in wet conditions.
Therefore, Dx = 5.0 cm has been chosen, sensibly larger
than the spatial resolution, whatever the water content
could be. This choice, as it will be clarified in Section ‘‘Sen-
sitivity analysis’’, also prevents the problem to be ill-posed,
since the simulated waveform results sensible to the varia-
tion of even only one of the hi values.
The minimization of the objective function has been car-
ried out with a genetic algorithm (Holland, 1975; Goldberg,
1989). Such an evolutionary algorithm allows easily to intro-
duce constraints to parameters variability, at the same time
avoiding local minima by introducing random parameters
vectors at each generation.
0.25 m and 0.35 m is characterized by of a large amount of
pumice stones with dimensions ranging between few milli-
meters and some centimeters. The presence of pumice
stones may affect the volumetric water content measured
by TDR.
Soil physical characterization, consisting in the determi-
nation of dry soil bulk density, particle size distribution, sat-
urated water content and saturated hydraulic conductivity,
was carried out on seven undisturbed samples taken at var-
ious locations and depths in the experimental field. Fig. 1
shows the particle size distribution curves measured for
according to USDA standards. Table 1 summarizes the mea-
sured soil physical parameters.
The relationships linking volumetric water content, mea-
sured gravimetrically, with soil dielectric permittivity and
electrical conductivity were determined on two undisturbed
cylindrical soil samples, with diameter of 10 cm and height
of 12 cm, taken at soil surface. To this aim, a TDR metallic
probe of the length of 12 cm, with three rods of the diame-
ter of 1.5 mm and external spacing of 20 mm was inserted
into the samples. After immersion in water, with electrical
conductivity of 0.1 S/m at 20 C, for 24 h, the samples were
placed on an electronic balance Precisa Instrument Ltd.
XB4200C with an accuracy of 0.01 g and evaporation took
place for 10 days, with air temperature ranging between
18 and 21 and relative humidity between 45% and 55%.
The weights of the samples were recorded at regular time
intervals during evaporation and, at the same time, TDR
Table 1 Physical characteristics of the investigated soil

Field experiments and soil characterization Sampling depth (m) cdry (g/cm3) hsat ksat (cm/min)
0.00 1.06 0.556 0.06
The above described method was applied to the measure- 0.00 1.13 0.547 0.15
ment of topsoil water content vertical profiles in an exper- 0.00 0.94 0.578 0.20
imental field located in S. Arpino (CE). The field belongs to 0.00 1.07 0.509 0.17
the volcanic area north west of Napoli, where pyroclastic 0.20 – 0.547 0.15
deposits characterize the upper soil layer. Soil physical 0.75 1.06 0.589 0.20
characteristics do not vary significantly up to a depth of 2.00 0.92 0.641 0.17
2.0 m below soil surface. The soil layer between the depths

100
90
80
70
60
weight %

50
40
30
20
10
0
0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10 100
d [mm]

z=0.2 m z= 0.75 m z=2.0 m

Figure 1 Particle size distribution curves of the investigated soil.

Field measurements of topsoil moisture profiles by vertical TDR probes 445

5.5

R2 = 0.975

ε r 1/2 5

4.5

4
0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
θ [m3/m3]

Figure 2 Experimental soil bulk dielectric permittivity vs. water content relationship: (d) experimental data; (—) best fit by Eq. (5).

0.06

0.05

R2 = 0.8355
0.04
σ [S/m2]

0.03

0.02

0.01

0
0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5

θ [m /m ]
3 3

Figure 3 Experimental soil bulk electrical conductivity vs. water content relationship: (d) experimental data; (—) best fit by Eq.
(6) with the parameters given in Eq. (7).

waveforms were acquired. At the end of the evaporation showed the best performance for fitting the er(h) experi-
experiment, the samples were oven dried at 105 C for mental data:
24 h and then weighed for the measurement of the dry e0:5  2:1301
weight. h¼ r : ð6Þ
8:1366
Soil dielectric permittivity was determined from TDR
The relationship proposed by Rhoades et al. (1976) was
waveforms with ‘classical’ approach by Eq. (1). Bulk soil
adopted for fitting the r(h) data:
electrical conductivity was determined from the waveforms
with the following expression (Dalton et al., 1984): r ¼ rs þ rw hðah þ bÞ: ð7Þ
pffiffiffiffi  
er Vt In the above equation, rs represents dry soil electrical con-
r¼ ln : ð5Þ ductivity; rw is soil solution electrical conductivity; a and b
120pLp Vr
are fitting parameters related to tortuosity of electric cur-
In Eq. (5) Vt and Vr represent respectively incident and re- rent flow paths. From experimental data fitting, it resulted
flected voltage at the beginning of the probe. The (e, h)
and (r, h) experimental points are respectively plotted in rs ¼ 0:0086 S=m;
Figs. 2 and 3, together with the relevant best fitting curves. a ¼ 1:752; ð8Þ
A linear relationship between h and the square root of er b ¼ 0:176:
446 R. Greco, A. Guida

Since soil water electrical conductivity in the field is not

Table 2 Geometrical characteristics of the TDR probes
known and probably variable during infiltration/evaporation
used for field water content measurements
processes, rw turns to be an additional fitting parameter of
Probe Rods diameter Rods spacing Probe length the inverse water content retrieval method.
(mm) (mm) (mm) The soil surface in the experimental field is nearly flat
S1 3 32 300 horizontal and the groundwater table lays approximately
S2 3 32 600 20 m deep below soil surface. TDR water content measure-
S3 3 32 150 ments were carried out with Tektronix 1502C cable tester,
S4 3 32 450 connected alternately via coaxial cable to 9 three rods
H1 3 32 105 metallic probes of various dimensions. After removing the
H2 3 32 105 grass covering, four probes of various lengths ranging be-
H3 3 32 105 tween 15 cm and 60 cm were inserted vertically from soil
H4 3 32 105 surface; a 60 cm deep trench was dug for the installation
H5 3 32 105 of five 10.5 cm long probes; such probes were inserted hor-
izontally into the wall of the trench at various depths. The
geometric characteristics of the probes are given in Table
2. Fig. 4 shows a sketch of the experimental field with the
15 cm

S2 S4 S1 S3 locations of the probes.

15 cm
The experimental apparatus was completed by a rain
30 cm

H1 gauge for the measurement of daily rainfall heights and a

45 cm

thermometer for the measurement of daily maximum and

60 cm

H2 minimum air temperatures.

The experimental activities lasted from 15 March 2007 to
H3
11 April 2007. During the entire period, rainfall height was
H4 - H5 measured every day at 12.00 a.m.; with few exceptions,
TDR waveforms were acquired twice a day, in the morning
between 9.00 a.m. and 11.00 a.m. and in the afternoon be-
Vertical Section tween 2.00 p.m. and 4.00 p.m. In total, around 40 wave-
forms for each installed probe were acquired during the
S1
experimental campaign.
50 cm
20 cm

Sensitivity analysis
S2 S3
H1 - H2 - H3 - H4 Identifiability of the parameters of a model is difficult to
15 cm 15 cm
15 cm

state rigorously, but it always requires model output to

H5 show high sensitivity to parameters variations (Chavent,
S4
40 cm 1987; Sun, 1994). The non-uniqueness of the solution may
Plan View also be avoided by imposing constraints to parameters val-
ues variability deduced by their physical meaning. In the
Figure 4 Sketch of the experimental field with the locations present case model parameters are constituted by N + 1
of the TDR probes. water content values hi in the vertices of the profile and
1.50

1.25

θ7=0.05
θ7=0.15
V /V 0

1.00
θ7=0.3
θ7=0.45
θ7=0.6

0.75

0.50
0 2 4 6 8
t [ns]

Figure 5 Effect of the change of the water content h7 in the middle of the 60 cm long probe on simulated TDR waveforms.
Field measurements of topsoil moisture profiles by vertical TDR probes 447

1.50

σ w=0.001S/m
σ w=0.005S/m
σ w=0.01S/m

1.25 σ w=0.02S/m

V /V 0 σ w=0.05S/m
1.00

σ w=0.1S/m

0.75

0.50
0 2 4 6 8 10
t [ns]

Figure 6 Effect of the change of soil water electrical conductivity rw on simulated TDR waveforms.

by soil water electrical conductivity rw, which have been
subjected to the following constraints:
0:05 6 hi 6 0:6 m3 =m3 ;
ð9Þ
0:001 6 rw 6 0:1 S=m:
A sensitivity analysis has been carried out to show the ef-
fects on the simulated waveform obtained by integrating
Eq. (2) due to a change of a single parameter. The wave-
forms refer to the case of a 60 cm long probe along which
the soil water content profile is represented as a broken line
with 12 segments.
Waveform sensitivity to variations of a single hi is studied
by changing the water content in the middle of the probe,
h7, over the entire range of variability given in the first of
Eq. (9). The other hi values are all equal to 0.3. Some of
the obtained waveforms are plotted in Fig. 5.
Fig. 6 shows the waveforms corresponding to a constant
water content profile with h = 0.3 and different values of
soil water electrical conductivity rw, covering all the inter-
val of variability given in the second of Eq. (9).
In both cases the waveforms are significantly affected by
parameters changes. Since the chosen objective function W
is a measure of the area between experimental and simu-
lated waveforms, it looks clear that its value is certainly af-
fected even by the change of a single parameter.
Results and discussion
During the observation period, the total recorded rainfall
height was 95.0 mm, with 10 rainy days (daily rainfall height
above 1.0 mm). Fig. 7 shows the histogram of daily rainfall
height and the observed minimum and maximum daily tem-
peratures. The large amount of precipitation and the high
level of air relative humidity during the dry periods caused
relatively slow evaporation form topsoil surface, determin-
ing in most cases wet soil conditions within the entire inves-

30

20
h [mm]
T [˚C]

10

0
15/03/07 22/03/07 29/03/07 05/04/07

Figure 7 Histogram of daily rainfall heights and time history of daily minimum and maximum temperatures.
448 R. Greco, A. Guida

0.5
probe S3 z<15cm
probe H1 z=15cm
probe H2 z=30cm

0.4

θ [m3/m3]

0.3

0.2
15/03/2007 22/03/2007 29/03/2007 05/04/2007 12/04/2007

0.45
probe H3 z=45cm
probe H4 z=60cm
probe H5 z=60cm

0.4
θ [m3/m3]

0.35

0.3
15/03/2007 22/03/2007 29/03/2007 05/04/2007 12/04/2007

Figure 8 Time history of mean local water content at various depths estimated with classical TDR approach.

tigated soil profile. Only the topsoil water content, affected
by evaporation, showed more variability. Fig. 8 gives the
mean water contents measured, with classical TDR ap-
proach, with 15 cm long vertical probe installed at soil sur-
face and with four 10.5 cm long horizontal probes buried at
various depths.
The water content at the depth of 30 cm resulted always
much smaller than what was measured at the other investi-
gated depths. This was probably due to the presence of
pumice stones inside the volume investigated by the TDR
probe buried at that depth.
The local mean values of water content provided by clas-
sical TDR approach have been compared with the profiles
retrieved with the inverse profiling TDR method applied to
30 cm, 45 cm and 60 cm long vertical probes installed at soil
surface. The optimization procedure for water content pro-
file estimation always provided low values of the objective
function W, between 0.033 and 0.042, indicating that very
good agreement between simulated and acquired TDR
waveforms was achieved (Fig. 9).
Soil water electrical conductivity values obtained by the
minimization of W resulted in all cases between 0.019 S/m
and 0.031 S/m, with a mean value of rw = 0.023 S/m.
The agreement between mean volumetric water content
measurements and h(z) profiles is in general satisfactory,
with a mean difference between local value of water con-
tent provided by classical TDR approach and by inverse pro-
filing method of 0.011 m3/m3, with a standard deviation of
0.060 m3/m3. The standard deviation of the differences is
mainly due to the values of water content provided by the
two approaches at 30 cm depth. At that depth, in fact, vol-
umetric water content measured by TDR presents a partic-
ularly high spatial variability due to the presence of
pumice stones inside the volume investigated by the probe.
If the water content data at 30 cm depth are removed, the
standard deviation of the differences between the two ap-
proaches becomes 0.007 m3/m3.
Figs. 10–12 give some examples of the obtained agree-
ment between local water content values and retrieved pro-
files. In particular, Fig. 10 is representative of extremely wet
Field measurements of topsoil moisture profiles by vertical TDR probes 449

1.5

1.25

V /V 0
1

0.75

0.5
0 2 4 6 8
t [ns]

Figure 9 Example of the agreement between experimental (dots) and simulated (continuous line) waveforms: S2 probe on
04.04.2007 morning (W = 0.037).

θ [m3/m3]
3 3
θ [m /m ]
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
0
0

horizontal probes 10
10
vertical 15cm probe
vertical 30cm probe vertical 30cm probe
vertical 45cm probe vertical 45cm probe
vertical 60cm probe vertical 60cm probe
20 horizontal probes
20
vertical 15cm probe
z [cm]
z [cm]

30 30

40 40

50 50

60 60

Figure 10 Vertical water content profiles and mean local Figure 11 Vertical water content profiles and mean local
values observed on 04.04.2007 morning: (d) mean values from values observed on 03.04.2007 afternoon: (d) mean values
horizontal probes; (– –) mean value from vertical 15 cm long from horizontal probes; (– –) mean value from vertical 15 cm
probe; (—) vertical water content profiles. long probe; (—) vertical water content profiles.
450
3 3
θ [m /m ]
0.2 0.3 0.4
0 files in a pyroclastic sandy loam. The adaptation to field
10
horizontal probes
vertical 15cm probe
20 vertical 30cm probe
vertical 45cm probe
vertical 60cm probe
z [cm]
30
40
50
60
Figure 12 Vertical water content profiles and mean local
values observed on 11.04.2007 morning: (d) mean values from
horizontal probes; (– –) mean value from vertical 15 cm long
probe; (—) vertical water content profiles.
conditions, since the plotted data refer to the measurements
carried out on 04.04.2007 afternoon, when 27 mm of
precipitation had been recorded by the rain gauge. Figs. 11
and 12 refer, respectively, to the measurements made on
03.04.2007 afternoon, when only 5 mm of rain height had
been measured during the previous 9 days, and to the after-
noon of 11.04.2007, after 6 dry days with brilliant sunshine
and high maximum temperatures, representing two of the
driest conditions encountered during the experimental
campaign.
In all the showed examples, the three vertical profiles are
in good agreement, either mutually or with the mean local
values. In most cases, the profiles show the presence of a
layer with smaller water content, although not exactly
around the depth of 30 cm as it is indicated by the horizontal
probe H2 buried at that depth. Such result may be ascribed to
different depths of the pumice stones affecting the water
content detected by the TDR probes. Such hypothesis seems
to be confirmed by the fact that the vertical probe predicting
the dryer layer closer to the depth of 30 cm is the probe S2,
which is the closest to the horizontal ones.
Conclusions
An inverse method for the measurement of soil water con-
tent profiles along TDR probes, already successfully tested
R. Greco, A. Guida
in laboratory experiments (Greco, 2006), has been adapted
0.5 and applied to field measurements of topsoil moisture pro-
measurements consisted in removing the a priori assumed
monotonic water content profile functional form, substi-
tuted with a broken line shaped water content profile with
unconstrained values in the vertices.
Before applying the method, a preliminary physical char-
acterization of the investigated soil was carried out on
undisturbed samples taken at the experimental field. In
particular, the relationships linking soil volumetric water
content with dielectric permittivity and electrical conduc-
tivity were experimentally determined.
For the field application of the inverse profiling method,
three TDR metallic probes (30 cm, 45 cm and 60 cm long)
were vertically inserted into topsoil surface of a pyroclastic
sandy loam soil. One 15 cm long probe vertically inserted
into topsoil surface and five horizontal 10.5 cm long probes
horizontally buried at various depths were also installed for
the measurement of mean values of water content with the
classical TDR method.
TDR waveforms acquisition was carried out twice a day
for 28 days. During the same period daily rainfall heights
and daily minimum and maximum temperatures were also
measured with a rain gauge and a thermometer installed
at the experimental field.
The reliability of the vertical water content profiles esti-
mated from the waveforms acquired with the three longer
vertical probes was tested by comparing them with the
mean local values of soil water content provided by the ver-
tical 15 cm long probe and by the five horizontal probes. A
satisfactory agreement was observed during the entire per-
iod, although the estimated water content at the depth of
30 cm resulted strongly variable, probably because mea-
surements results were affected by the presence of pumice
stones inside the volumes investigated by some of the
probes at that depth.
The obtained results indicate that the proposed TDR
based soil water content inverse profiling technique is suit-
able for field applications, although the presence of heter-
ogeneous soil layers may hamper the reliability of the
retrieved water content profiles. However, the developed
technique looks as a promising tool for infiltration and evap-
oration monitoring in the field.
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