ThaiScience  


ENIVRONMENT ASIA


Volume 13, No. 02, Month MAY, Year 2020, Pages 78 - 87


Determination of the volumetric soil water content of two soil types using ground penetrating radar: a case study in thailand

Suppanut Kummode, Thanop Thitimakorn, and Sasikan Kupongsak


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Determination of Volumetric Soil water content (VSWC) is important in many fields such as agriculture, hydrology, and ecology. At present, there are many methods to determine VSWC for example gravimetric, time-domain reflectometry (TDR), capacitance probe methods. In this study, ground penetrating radar (GPR) was used to determine VSWC of diff erent soil types. One is a loam and another is loamy sand. The ground wave method with central frequency of 400 MHz antennas was used to acquire the GPR data. Then, the dielectric permittivities are converted to VSWC by Topp"es equation. The results of water content calculated by gravimetric technique from soil samples at diff erent depths (10, 20 and 30 cm) were used as the references. The results revealed that the VSWC of loam soil from GPR at depth 10 cm was correlated very well with the water content derived from gravimetric technique with the root mean square error (RMSE) value of 1.173%. In loamy sand, the VSWC from GPR at depth to 20 cm was in good agreement with the VSWC from gravimetric technique with RMSE value of 5.978%. The comparisons of water content to gravimetric water content derived from both methods demonstrate that GPR can be used to off er fast, accurate, spatially dense, and non-invasive determination of VSWC in fi eld-scale applications.


Keywords

Volumetric soil water content; Ground penetrating rader; Ground wave



ENIVRONMENT ASIA


Published by : Thai Society of Higher Education Institutes on Environment
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