ABSTRACT

Soil moisture plays an important role in many environmental, agricultural, hydrologic, and climatic processes. In hydrology, soil moisture governs the partitioning of rainfall into runoff and infiltration, and neglecting its variability largely impacts on the prediction of solute leaching, erosion, runoff, and evaporation. In agriculture and irrigation applications, soil moisture is a crucial factor controlling plant growth and germination, particularly when saline stress is encountered. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is based on the propagation of a radar electromagnetic wave into the ground. A full-waveform electromagnetic model for the particular case of zero-offset, off-ground GPR was developed by Lambot et al., where a single GPR antenna plays simultaneously the role of an emitter an and a receiver and is situated at some distance above the soil. The developed GPR method was widely validated in laboratory experiments in different soil configurations, including two-layered soil, shallow soil layering, continuously varying soil moisture profile, and the presence of high electrical conductivity.