Evaluation of the Heat-Pulse Technique for Measuring Soil Water Content with Thermo-TDR Sensor

摘要

The heat-pulse technique is emerging as a useful technique for measuring soil water content ( ., with the advantages of automated, rapid, and minimal destructive. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of the Liu et al. (2008) thermo-TDR (time domain reflectometry) sensor for measuring soil water content using the heat-pulse technique. For this sensor, the root mean square errors (RMSE) of heat-pulse soil water content HP) estimates compared with gravimetric measures in laboratory evaluations was 0.011 m3 m-3 and was 0.018 m3 m-3 in a field evaluation. The results indicated that the sensor with a needle diameter of 2 mm, needle length of 40 mm, and needle-to-needle spacing of 8 mm can provide accurate, nondestructive, repeated estimates of soil