comparison of field performance of multiple soil moisture.pdfVIP

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN WATER RESOURCES ASSOCIATION Vol. 44, No. 1 AMERICAN WATER RESOURCES ASSOCIATION February 2008 COMPARISON OF FIELD PERFORMANCE OF MULTIPLE SOIL MOISTURE SENSORS IN A SEMI-ARID RANGELAND1 Ginger B. Paige and Timothy O. Keefer2 ABSTRACT: Automated electronic soil moisture sensors, such as time domain reflectometry (TDR) and capaci- tance probes are being used extensively to monitor and measure soil moisture in a variety of scientific and land management applications. These sensors are often used for a wide range of soil moisture applications such as drought forage prediction or validation of large-scale remote sensing instruments. The convergence of three dif- ferent research projects facilitated the evaluation and comparison of three commercially available electronic soil moisture probes under field application conditions. The sensors are all installed in shallow soil profiles in a well instrumented small semi-arid shrub covered subwatershed in Southeastern Arizona. The sensors use either a TDR or a capacitance technique; both of which indirectly measure the soil dielectric constant to determine the soil moisture content. Sensors are evaluated over a range of conditions during three seasons comparing responses to natural wetting and drying sequences and using water balance and infiltration simulation models. Each of the sensors responded to the majority of precipitation events; however, they varied greatly in response time and magnitude from each other. Measured profile soil moisture storage compared better to water balance estimates when soil moisture in deeper layers was accounted for in t