Location: Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory
Title: USDA LTAR Common Experiment measurement: Soil water contentAuthor
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Submitted to: Protocols.io
Publication Type: Research Notes Publication Acceptance Date: 8/3/2024 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: This protocol is part of a larger set published at protocols.io for the LTAR Common Experiment. This protocol outlines how to measure soil water content. This measurement is important to agriculture because it quantifies the available water for plant production. The goal is to provide repeatable guidelines to achieve consistent data collection, instrument maintenance, data processing, and quality control for obtaining these data at cropland sites across the U.S. Technical Abstract: Soil water content, also known as soil moisture, is commonly defi ned as the volume of water per volume of soil (volumetric soil water content). Gravimetric soil water content is the weight of water per weight of soil. For most purposes, we speak of volumetric water content in the units of m3/m3. Soil water content usually refers to the water contained within the vadose zone of the surface soil layer. Soil water content below the saturated water content of the soil usually ranges from 0-0.5 m3/m3. |
