Monitoring Shallow Soil Water Content Under Natural Field Conditions Using the Early‐Time GPR Signal Technique

Ferrara, Carlotta; Barone, Pier Matteo; Steelman, Colby M.; Pettinelli, Elena; Endres, Anthony L.

doi:10.2136/vzj2012.0202

Cited by 35 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…This introductory paper shows archaeological and cultural heritage applications of examining very low EM signal amplitudes that are caused by high attenuation, poor antenna coupling, and temporal stretching. The obtained results demonstrate that based on the high attenuation of the GPR signal, it is possible to achieve near-surface permittivity information that is consistent with the results obtained from direct ground wave velocity measurements and to accurately predict shallow soil moisture conditions [16].…”

Section: Final Remarks and Conclusionsupporting

confidence: 74%

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Detecting Moisture Damage in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage: a Brief Introduction

Ferrara¹,

Barone²

2015

IJA

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Abstract:Moisture damage is the most important issue in the preservation and integrity of cultural heritage. This paper discusses the ability of geophysical instruments to detect this problem. Non-destructive techniques (NDTs), such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), use electromagnetic (EM) impulses to investigate archaeological sites and building structures that are affected by moisture and can be used to locate and estimate the extent of damage and to develop restoration plans before permanent damage occurs. The main objective of this paper is to introduce the capacity of surface GPR to rapidly and non-invasively estimate physical soil properties, develop novel processing strategies and provide valuable information about the investigated material in archaeological and cultural heritage sites. This new approach analyzes the amplitude attributes of the GPR pulse obtained from conventional single-offset surface-coupled profiling. To achieve the objective of this study, the technique is examined in two different experimental test settings to show that GPR analyses clearly highlight dampness as ringing anomalies with a very low EM signal amplitudes that are caused by high attenuation, poor antenna coupling, and temporal stretching. These indicators are important for diagnosing cultural heritage sites by allowing for the correct and precise visualization of radargrams and time-slices of the moisture anomalies.

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Section: Final Remarks and Conclusionsupporting

confidence: 74%

“…The theoretical bases of this radar technique are described in [9], [13]- [16], and literature therein. One of the main findings of these studies was an explicit expression for the amplitude of the direct signal that propagates between the antennas, which is related to the relative soil dielectric permittivity.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting Moisture Damage in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage: a Brief Introduction

Ferrara¹,

Barone²

2015

IJA

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“…Any reflection caused by a change in the EM wave velocity due to a change in dielectric permittivity will be displayed as a hyperbola due to the conical nature of the EM beam with the apex of the hyperbola indicating the actual location of the buried object [17,[33][34][35]. In addition to object location, size and orientation can also be estimated, as well as water content, as differences in water content within a heterogeneous medium are the primary drivers of varying dielectric constants between objects [22,23,36].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Evaluation of Several Key Factors Affecting Root Biomass Estimation by 1500 MHz Ground-Penetrating Radar

2017

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Accurate quantification of coarse roots without disturbance represents a gap in our understanding of belowground ecology. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has shown significant promise for coarse root detection and measurement, however root orientation relative to scanning transect direction, the difficulty identifying dead root mass, and the effects of root shadowing are all key factors affecting biomass estimation that require additional research. Specifically, many aspects of GPR applicability for coarse root measurement have not been tested with a full range of antenna frequencies. We tested the effects of multiple scanning directions, root crossover, and root versus soil moisture content in a sand-hill mixed oak community using a 1500 MHz antenna, which provides higher resolution than the oft used 900 MHz antenna. Combining four scanning directions produced a significant relationship between GPR signal reflectance and coarse root biomass (R 2 = 0.75) (p < 0.01) and reduced variability encountered when fewer scanning directions were used. Additionally, significantly fewer roots were correctly identified when their moisture content was allowed to equalize with the surrounding soil (p < 0.01), providing evidence to support assertions that GPR cannot reliably identify dead root mass. The 1500 MHz antenna was able to identify roots in close proximity of each other as well as roots shadowed beneath shallower roots, providing higher precision than a 900 MHz antenna. As expected, using a 1500 MHz antenna eliminates some of the deficiency in precision observed in studies that utilized lower frequency antennas.

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“…At fine scales (e.g. field, hillslope, or small watershed), surface soil moisture can be attained from portable soil moisture sensors or derived using cosmic-ray neutron probes and ground-penetrating radar (Penna et al, 2013;Ferrara et al, 2013;Baatz et al, 2014). At larger scales (e.g.…”

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confidence: 99%

Depth scaling of soil moisture content from surface to profile: multistation testing of observation operators

Gao¹,

Brocca²,

Zhao³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Abstract. The accurate assessment of profile soil moisture for spatial domains is usually difficult due to the associated costs, strong spatial-temporal variability, and nonlinear relationship between surface and profile moisture. Here we attempted to use observation operators built by Cumulative Distribution Frequency (CDF) matching method to directly predict profile soil moisture from surface measurements based on multi-station in situ observations from the Soil and Climate Analysis Network (SCAN). We first analyzed the effects of temporal resolution (hourly, daily and weekly) and data length (half year in nongrowing season, half year in growing season, one year, two years and four years) on the performance of observation operators. The results showed that temporal resolution had a negligible influence on the performance of observation operators. However, data length significantly changed the prediction accuracy of observation operators, and a two-year interval was identified as the optimal data length in building observation operators. A dataset with a two-year duration was therefore used to test the robustness of observation operators in three primary climates (humid continental, humid subtropical and semiarid) of the continental USA, with the popular exponential filter employed as a reference approach. The results indicated that observation operators reliably predicted profile soil moisture for the majority of stations in both calibration and validation periods and performed almost equally well with the exponential filter method. This suggests that observation operators are a feasible statistical tool for depth scaling of soil moisture. The findings here have the potential to be applied in profile soil moisture prediction from surface measurements at a range of environments if the target site has long enough (two years) soil moisture observations even with coarse temporal resolutions. Continuous and accurate measurement of profile soil moisture, however, is difficult because of expensive field Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi

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Monitoring Shallow Soil Water Content Under Natural Field Conditions Using the Early‐Time GPR Signal Technique

Cited by 35 publications

References 32 publications

Detecting Moisture Damage in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage: a Brief Introduction

Detecting Moisture Damage in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage: a Brief Introduction

Experimental Evaluation of Several Key Factors Affecting Root Biomass Estimation by 1500 MHz Ground-Penetrating Radar

Depth scaling of soil moisture content from surface to profile: multistation testing of observation operators

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