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Posts tagged ‘Soil Moisture Sensor’

Apr 7

Green Roofs—Do They Work? (Part II)

Innovative soil scientist, John Buck, and his team have discovered that green roofs have more capacity than people imagined (see part I).  Below are some of the challenges he sees for the future, and the type of measurements he suggests researchers take, as they continue to validate the effectiveness of these urban ecosystems.

Green and whited plant on a garden rooftop with orange rocks

A green roof is essentially a garden on a roof, but rather than growing plants in soil, installers use a synthetic substrate made of expanded shale, expanded clay, crushed brick, or other highly porous, lightweight material.

New Challenges for Green Roofs

Green roof results are promising, but they present a new challenge:  making sure the plants have enough water. The crux of the challenge is that the lightweight, expanded shale/clay substrate material, the standard in green roof design, does a good job of soaking up the water, but has some peculiar properties that are unlike typical soils.  Specifically, the expanded shale and expanded clay media tend to be dominated by sand and fine gravel-sized particles that provide a high proportion of macropores, but the interior porosity of the large particles is dominated with micropores.  That pore size distribution leads researchers to two important questions— How much water will be readily available for plant growth? And, will the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity be adequate to avoid starving the roots under high-evaporative demand by allowing water to flow to roots from the bulk soil? These are critical questions as green roof technologies continue to evolve.

Overhead close up of garden roof plant

Researchers wonder, will the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity be adequate to avoid starving the roots under high-evaporative demand.

Measurements Required for Green Roof Validation

Still, Buck has learned a great deal from his work.  Considering the wild spatial distribution of summer storms, quantitative green roof performance studies require that rainfall be measured locally. Monitoring of soil volumetric moisture content measurements in concert with rainfall and soil lysimeter measurements of drainage, reveal the degree of total and capillary saturation, drainage rate, and porosity available for storage. Soil water potential sensors, placed within the capillary fringe of water ponded over subsurface drainage layers, can provide useful insights regarding the dryness of the drainage layer and overlying soil, as well as the available storage of stormwater within the drainage layer.

Direct measurement of soil drainage using lysimeters is a key supplemental measurement on green roof performance quantification projects because there is an unmeasured component of water storage where drought-resistant alpine succulents (typically Sedum species) are used on green roofs.  The Sedum plants can absorb up to 10 mm of rainfall equivalent in their plant tissues.

Plants poking out of the soil in front of a house

Measurement of soil drainage using lysimeters is a key supplemental measurement on green roof performance quantification projects.

Other Projects and Future Plans

At ground level, Buck is quantifying the performance of intensive stormwater infiltration areas known as rain gardens, bioretention areas, or more generically, infiltration-based stormwater best management practices (Infiltration-based BMPs).  When monitoring infiltration-based stormwater BMPs, Buck has used similar tools to those used on green roofs, but has added water-level sensors and piezometers.  Buck has found that ancillary measurements of electrical conductivity, often available on water content sensors, along with surface and pore water sampling, can be used to document transformations taking place in infiltration systems.  These measurements now combine to show that green roofs and infiltration-based BMPs are indeed making a difference to urban environments and contributions to CSOs.  The challenge now is how to implement this technology more widely.  But, with the validation now in hand, that job should be quite a bit easier.

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Apr 1

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Green Roofs—Do They Work?

Green roofs are being built in large cities to provide stormwater management, reduce the urban heat island effect, and improve air quality—but are they effective?   John Buck, an innovative soil scientist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been trying to quantitatively answer this question in many different cities using soil monitoring equipment in order to determine the efficacy and best types of green infrastructure for managing stormwater.  

Garden on a rooftop with flowers and a city around it

A green roof installation site at the Allegheny County Office Building in Pennsylvania.

Why Green Roofs?

In older cities, stormwater runoff is typically combined with sewage flows, and these combined waters are treated at a sewage treatment plant during dry weather and light rain events. Unfortunately, during more substantial storms (sometimes just a few mm of rain) the combined flows exceed the ability of the sewage treatment plant, and are discharged without treatment to surface waters as “combined sewage overflows” (CSOs). One of the ways to mitigate CSOs is to capture and store stormwater to keep it out of the combined sewer.  

A green roof is essentially a garden on a roof, but rather than growing plants in soil, installers use a synthetic substrate made of expanded shale, expanded clay, crushed brick, or other highly porous, lightweight material with high infiltration rates.  During a storm event, water will soak into the air-filled pore space in the substrate, which acts like a sponge to soak up the rain. Excess water will flow into a subsurface drainage layer and will leave the roof garden via existing roof drains. Because a substantial fraction of the stormwater is stored in the substrate, it can later dissipate through evapotranspiration instead of contributing to stormwater volume and CSOs.

Researcher kneeling testing soil with a soil sensor

Researchers are using soil moisture sensors for measuring temperature, bulk electrical conductivity and volumetric water content in green roofs and green infrastructure.

Finding Answers

Designers and regulators want to know how well green roofs work and if they are being over-engineered. They want answers to questions such as: “What sort of substrate should I be using? What type of plants can survive green roof conditions? Will I need to irrigate the green roof when there are no storms to water the plants?” and, “Will the green roof work as well during a one-inch storm that occurs over a half hour versus a five-inch storm that occurs over five days?”  

Buck is using soil lysimeters and modified tipping bucket rain gauges to measure the quantity, intensity, and quality of water coming into and going out of the green roofs.  He also tracks weather parameters and calculates daily evapotranspiration of landscapes.  Using soil sensors, he measures electrical conductivity (dissolved salts), volumetric water content, and temperature.  He has installed data loggers that send data to the web via GSM cellular connection, allowing stakeholders access to the data in real-time.  This data telemetry provides additional data security, immediately updated results, instant feedback of system problems, and an easy way to share data with others.

Green Roof Runoff Reduction graph

Visualized data of the 87% annualized runoff reduction at Phipps Conservatory green roof site in Pittsburgh, PA.

What Has Been Learned?

Buck discovered that green roofs have much more capacity than people ever imagined.  At The Penfield Apartments in St. Paul, Minnesota, the green roof retained enough water to reduce runoff to about half of a conventional roof, and the peak intensity of the runoff was about one-quarter of what it would have been without the green roof.  At Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, there was an 87% annualized runoff reduction and almost no runoff from typical summer rain events.  Buck comments, “Interestingly, on the Penfield project, we expected better hydrologic performance where soils were thicker, but there was no difference, or results were slightly the reverse of expectations. That reversal was likely due to the confounding influence of irrigation, which was probably non-uniform and not metered or measured by the rain gauge.”

Next week:  Read about some of the challenges John Buck sees for the future, and what kind of measurements he suggests researchers make, as they continue to validate the effectiveness of these urban ecosystems.

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Mar 23

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Can Wastewater Save The United Arab Emirates’ Groundwater? (Part II)

With very little recharge and irrigation comprising 75% of groundwater use, natural water resources in the United Arab Emirates region are disappearing fast (see part I).  Wafa Al Yamani and her PhD advisor, Dr. Brent Clothier, are investigating using treated sewage effluent and groundwater for irrigating the desert forests along UAE motorways.

Abu Dhabi from the ocean looking at the city

Abu Dhabi

Infiltrometers Predict Dripper Behavior:

Wafa and her team used what they call, “the Ankeny twin head method” for site evaluation with infiltrometers, and they’ve been able to use it to predict dripper behavior.  They begin with the head at -60 mm, do a series of measurements to measure steady infiltration, and repeat the process at -5 mm.  They use those measurements to solve Woodings equation which has two unknowns: saturated hydraulic conductivity and capillarity.  Dr. Clothier says, “We’ve done it at two heads, and we can use Woodings equation to solve for the slope of the exponential conductivity curve.  Hence, I can predict with time, the movement of the wetting front away from the dripper.   That’s been very useful to work out what volume of soil we’re wetting.  It tells us if we should have one or two drippers.  In this forest, we think we can get away with two drippers because if they irrigate for two hours, the radius of the wet front will be 20 cm, and the depth will be about 40 cm, which is a sufficient volume of water for the tree roots.”  Dr. Clothier says they also constructed a small dyke around the drippers so they could contain the water inside the drip zone in case of hydrophobicity or uneven sand.  

researcher recording data while sitting on the floor

Wafa on site, using the twin head method.

Treated Effluent Resolves Salinity Issues

Historically, the UAE pumped their sewage effluent into the Arabian Gulf, but recently, there has been a shift toward seeing it as a valuable water resource, not only for the desert forest, but for irrigation of fruit crops and date palms.  Dr. Clothier says, “Once we started getting our results we realized we were irrigating with groundwater that had high salinity, about 10 dS/m, and that treated sewage effluent had only 0.5 dS/m.  This was an important discovery because with the high salinity groundwater, you have to over-irrigate to maintain a salt leaching fraction.  However, when we apply the treated sewage effluent, we immediately see a response in the trees because it has 1/20th of the salt load.”

Dr. Clothier says that there is one problem with the trees responding so well to the sewage effluent.  The treated sewage effluent makes the trees grow taller and faster, so if the ecosystem service you want from the desert forest is that they’re 4-6 meters high, it becomes an issue.  He adds,”This is actually a positive problem, because we can now induce deficit irrigation, thereby creating a larger resource of treated sewage effluent in order to irrigate far more forests.”

Large white irrigation tanks sitting in sand in the desert

Researchers irrigated with water from these tanks which stored groundwater and treated sewage effluent.

What’s The Future?

Dr. Clothier says they started with a pilot study in the UAE in 2014, and it was so successful that they ended up with two fully-funded four-year projects, one on treated sewage effluent, and one investigating the irrigation of date palms. He says they have another 3 ½ years of work in the UAE on these projects, and in the end, their goal is to develop a model for forestry irrigation and soil salinity management, along with developing capability for the measurement and modeling of irrigation impacts on sustainable forestry.  They have recently developed a prototype of a computerized decision support tool for irrigation which will provide sustainable irrigation advice to optimize water use.  The support tool takes into account the need to maintain salt leaching, and actual irrigation records can be entered to enable real-time use.

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Mar 18

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Can Wastewater Save The United Arab Emirates’ Groundwater?

The hyper-arid United Arab Emirates (UAE) has a rapidly dwindling supply of groundwater, and that water is becoming increasingly saline.

Image of the city of Dubai at night on the coast of the UAE

Dubai is situated on the coast of the UAE.

With very little recharge and irrigation comprising 75% of groundwater use, natural water resources in this region are disappearing fast.  PhD candidate Wafa Al Yamani works for the Environmental Agency of Abu Dhabi, which has contracted with Plant and Food Research in New Zealand to investigate using treated sewage effluent and groundwater for irrigating the desert forests along their motorways.  

Sidr tree plantation in the UAE forest in the sand

Sidr trees in the UAE forest.

The Desert Forests

The UAE desalinates all the water for their cities, so the tertiary treated sewage effluent from these cities could be a viable resource, replacing some groundwater for irrigation of the desert forests. These forests perform a wide range of ecosystem services from sand stabilization along all UAE motorways to harboring a great deal of biodiversity.  There is also a cultural association with the forests.  The original ruler of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed, embarked on a program in the 1970s of “greening the desert,” so the people see the desert forests as a legacy of their founder.

Infiltrometer pushing sand and being measured

Infiltrometers were used to examine how the drip irrigation system worked.

Measuring Water Use:

Wafa and her PhD advisor, Dr. Brent Clothier, had a goal to minimize groundwater use and maximize value by quantifying the irrigation needs of the UAE’s five most important desert-forestry species.  They also wanted to determine the impact of treated sewage effluent on forest growth and health.  They used infiltrometers to examine how the drip irrigation system worked.  Dr. Clothier says, “These soils have hydraulic conductivities of between 2 and 5 meters an hour.  They are highly permeable desert sands.  We can find out how wide the bulb (the wetted area underneath an irrigation dripper) is and how deep the water will travel by using an infiltrometer to look at the hydraulic properties of the soil.”  Dr. Clothier has also developed software to predict water movement radially, with depth and with the time that the drippers are on.  He comments, “We’ve now got a setup of two drippers per tree, and we will use that in the future for modeling how the trees are taking up water from the root zone.”

Tree with 20cm dykes accessing the dripper water

Researchers built dykes of 20 cm to stop surface redistribution of dripper water.

The scientists used a heat pulse method to measure tree water-use by comparing sap flow with evaporative demand (ETo).  They used Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) to measure soil water content, and they have developed a “light stick” using light sensors to detect the shadow area of the trees to measure trees’ leaf area in order to predict the crop factor that will enable prediction of tree water-use from ETo.

Next week:  Find out how Wafa and her team use infiltrometers to predict dripper behavior and how the treated effluent resolves salinity issues.

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Feb 25

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Irrigation and Climate Impacts to the Water-Energy Balance of the WI Central Sands (Part II)

Due to controversy over the growing number of high capacity wells in the Wisconsin Central Sands, University of Wisconsin PhD student, Mallika Nocco, is researching how agricultural land use, irrigation, and climate change impact the region’s water-energy balance (see part I).  This week, read about her challenges installing lysimeters below the root zone, how she used a GPS system that can find the lysimeters within a half-inch of accuracy, and her surprising conclusions.

Irrigation sprinkler line set up in a grassy field

This relatively small ecological region has gone from 60 high capacity wells in 1960 to over 2,500 today.

Below the Root Zone

Nocco says getting the lysimeters below the root zone was a major challenge.  “We tried a couple of things, but we settled on installing all the lysimeters with an 18-inch auger that would drill a hole slightly bigger than the whole lysimeter.  We dug an 80 cm trench to the top of the monolith zone. Then, we pounded the drain gauge divergence control tube to 1.4 m to obtain an intact monolith, wherever it was possible to do so. We also stratified soil moisture sensors at 10, 20, 40, and 80 cm.  We used heavy equipment to slowly lift out the monolith, dig out the soil below, and place it back in, keeping  track of all of the different soil horizons, and backfilled as close to the bulk density as we could.”

Researcher filling a hole with dirt and a tube with dirt

Passive capillary lysimeter installation

Finding the Lysimeters with GPS

Typically, scientists bury lysimeters close to the edge of the field so they are easy to locate, but Nocco was concerned that they would prejudice their data due to the donut effect of center pivot irrigation: more irrigation hits the center of the field with less irrigation toward the edges. She comments, ”When I installed the first ten lysimeters, I had not yet come up with a way to find everything. Those instruments are all about 15 meters from the field edge so that I could triangulate measurements and find them during cultivation.  But then I met an extension scientist at the university who had access to an RTK GPS system, which can locate instrumentation within a half-inch of accuracy.  With his help and training, we were able to install the rest of the lysimeters at more random spots throughout the field.”

Irrigation sprinkler line set up in a pastor or field

Nocco was concerned that they would prejudice their data due to the donut effect of center pivot irrigation.

Surprising Conclusions

Nocco says that ET and differences in crop physiology do not explain or account for all of the variability that she saw in groundwater recharge.  Her team did a particle size analysis on the soils adjacent to the lysimeters, and she comments, “We thought that the greater the relative sand content in the soils, the more recharge we would have seen, but what we are seeing is the opposite.  The particle size analysis reveals a negative linear correlation between potential recharge and sand content. The more silt there is in these lysimeters, the more volume of recharge.  What I’m curious about now is if we’re seeing a greater volume of recharge in the siltier spots from flux convergence.  I’m trying to obtain the time series data from the pressure transducers to see if maybe the sandier areas had less potential recharge, but perhaps drained faster.  I have seen a correlation between antecedent soil moisture content and particle size (with no correlation based on crop type).  So it also looks like the siltier soils are holding more water when the rain comes through.”

What’s Next?

Eventually, Nocco plans to use field-generated estimates of groundwater recharge and ET to parameterize and validate a dynamic, agroecosystem model, Agro-IBIS, simulating hydrological responses to climate and land use changes over the past 60 years. Nocco will then share the water-energy budgets and water quantity/climate simulations with stakeholders in the Wisconsin Central Sands area.

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Feb 17

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Irrigation and Climate Impacts to the Water-Energy Balance of the WI Central Sands (Part I)

Due to controversy over the growing number of high capacity wells in the Wisconsin Central Sands, University of Wisconsin PhD student, Mallika Nocco, is researching how agricultural land use, irrigation, and climate change impact the region’s water-energy balance.  She and her team have uncovered some surprising results.

Fisher women leans in for a kiss with a class 1 trout she caught

A class 1 trout stream has sufficient natural reproduction to sustain populations of wild trout at or near carry capacity.

Water Use Debate

There are class 1 trout streams in the Central Sands region, and some people worry that the increasing number of high capacity wells used for agriculture will reduce the water levels in those streams.  “Lake Huron has lost about 11 feet of water since 2000,” says one resident of the Central Sands area, “and water levels are continuing to drop.” In 2008, the small well he used to pump drinking water went dry, and he blames the high capacity wells.” (Aljazeera America)  On the other side of the debate, agriculture irrigated by these wells is extremely valuable to the state, and growers have taken quite a bit of time to understand the water cycle and their role in it. You can read about their water management goals and accomplishments here.

Updating Former Research

Irrigated agriculture wasn’t prevalent or profitable in the Wisconsin Central Sands until groundwater irrigation with high capacity wells became feasible in the 1950s.  Since then, this relatively small ecological region has gone from 60 high capacity wells in 1960 to over 2,500 today.

Mallika Nocco is studying potential groundwater recharge from irrigated cropping systems that use the wells, hoping to understand if the irrigation water is lost or returned to the groundwater.  She says, “Until now, we’ve been relying on models validated by two lysimeters in the 1970s. Champ Tanner (one of the fathers of environmental biophysics) designed the weighing lysimeters, and they were very accurate, but we wanted to do a larger scale study with multiple crops to get a handle on interannual variability and to improve our understanding of recharge in the region so we can do a better job of managing irrigation and groundwater.”

Lysimeter installation into a dirt and a field

Lysimeter installation into actively managed fields presented challenges that the research team had to overcome.

Measuring Recharge

Nocco used twenty-five drain gauge lysimeters to capture vadose zone flux under potato and maize cropping systems.  She monitored soil water (and temperature) flux by stratifying water content sensors from the soil surface to a depth of 1.4 meters.  She also estimated evapotranspiration (ET) using a porometer to measure stomatal conductance, in addition to obtaining micrometeorology, leaf area index, and gas exchange measurements.

Nocco and her team had to put their sensors in to avoid cultivation, so they extended the drain gauge PVC that comes up to the soil surface and removed it any time there was major fieldwork, whether it was tillage or planting, so that the area over the lysimeter got the same treatment as the rest of the agricultural fields.

Below the Root Zone

Nocco says getting the lysimeters below the root zone was a challenge.  Next week, read about how she solved that challenge, how she used a GPS system to find the lysimeters within a half-inch of accuracy, and about her surprising conclusions.

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Feb 11

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Estimating Relative Humidity in Soil: How to Stop Doing it Wrong

Estimating the relative humidity in soil?  Most people do it wrong…every time.  Dr. Gaylon S. Campbell shares a lesson on how to correctly estimate soil relative humidity from his new book, Soil Physics with Python, which he recently coauthored with Dr. Marco Bittelli.

Desert with trees and brush everywhere

Radioactive waste buried in steel containers will corrode if the humidity is too high.

A number of years ago a former student told me of a meeting he had with some engineers establishing a low-level radioactive waste repository in a desert area. The waste was to be buried, and at least some of it was in steel containers which would corrode if the humidity was too high. The engineers assumed the humidity in the soil would be pretty low because it was a desert, but they didn’t know how low. So, what is the relative humidity in soil? That sounds like it would be a hard thing to find out without measuring it, but it isn’t. Let’s apply a little physics to see what we can find.

The energy required to create an infinitesimal volume of water vapor can be found using the first law of thermodynamics. For an adiabatic system

Thermodynamics Equations

where dE is the energy required, p is the pressure, and dV is the volume change.

The Boyle-Charles law, which gives the pressure-volume relationship for a perfect gas, is

Thermodynamics Equations

where n is the number of moles of gas, R is the universal gas constant, and T is the kelvin temperature. Rearranging terms and taking the derivative of both sides gives

Thermodynamics Equations

This equation can be substituted for dV in the first equation, giving

Thermodynamics Equations

The total energy required to go from a reference vapor pressure, po (the vapor pressure of pure water) to the vapor pressure of the water in the soil, p is

Thermodynamics Equations

We can divide both sides by the mass of water. The left side then becomes the energy per unit mass of water in the soil, which we call the water potential. On the right side, the number of moles per unit mass is the reciprocal of the molecular mass of water, and the ratio of the vapor to the saturation vapor pressure is the relative humidity hr so the final equation is

Thermodynamics Equations

We can rearrange this and take the exponential of both sides, giving

Thermodynamics Equations

In the second version of the equation the molecular mass of water, the gas constant and the temperature (298K) have been substituted.

We can use this equation to find the range of humidities we would expect in soil. When soil is very wet, the water potential is near 0, so the humidity is exp(0) = 1. At the dry end, the soil is dried mainly by plant water uptake. Even desert soils support some vegetation. The soil near the surface will be dried by evaporation, but a few decimeters below the surface the lowest water potentials are those to which plants can dry them. The nominal permanent wilting point (lower limit of plant available water) is -1500 J/kg. Desert vegetation can extract water to lower potentials. If we say their lower limit is -2500 J/kg, then the humidity is

Thermodynamics Equations

so the relative humidity in the soil is around 98%. Sagebrush can go lower than -2500 J/kg. We measured -7000 J/kg under it at the end of the growing season. Even that, though, is around 95% humidity.

The conclusion is that the humidity in the soil is always near saturation, except in a shallow evaporation layer near the surface. I don’t remember what the engineers were expecting. I think anything above 60 or 70% was going to be a disaster for corroding the steel containers. I don’t know whether they believed the calculations or just went on thinking that desert soil is dry.

Take our Soil Moisture Master Class

Six short videos teach you everything you need to know about soil water content and soil water potential—and why you should measure them together.  Plus, master the basics of soil hydraulic conductivity.

Watch it now—>

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Feb 4

Predicting the Stability of Rangeland Productivity to Climate Change

Dr. Lauren Hallett, researcher at  the University of California, Berkeley, recently conducted a study testing the importance of compensatory dynamics on forage stability in an experimental field setting where she manipulated rainfall availability and species interactions. She wanted to understand how climate variability affected patterns of species tradeoff in grasslands over time and how those tradeoffs affected the stability of things like forage production across changing rainfall conditions.

field with species tradeoffs standing in the brush

Species tradeoffs could help mitigate the negative effects of climate variability on overall forage production.

Species Tradeoff

A key mechanism that can lead to stability in forage production is compensatory dynamics, in which the responses of different species  to climate fluctuations result in tradeoffs between functional groups over time. These tradeoffs could help mitigate the negative effects of climate variability on overall forage production.  Dr. Hallett comments, “In California grasslands, there’s a pattern that is part of rangeland dogma, that in dry years you have more forbs, and in wet years you have more grasses. I wondered if you could manage the system so that both forbs and grasses are present in the seed bank, able to respond to climate.  This would perhaps buffer community properties, like soil cover for erosion control and forage production in terms of biomass, from the effects of climate variability.”

Tradeoff in a green field, aerial view

In areas experiencing moderate grazing, there was a strong species tradeoff between grasses and forbs.

Manipulating Species Composition

Dr. Hallett capitalized on the pre-existing grazing manipulation that her lab had done over the previous four years.  The grazing she replicated for this study was experimentally controlled, making it easier to ensure consistency.  She built rainout shelters where she collected the water and applied it to dry versus wet plots.  She also manipulated species composition, allowing only grasses, only forbs, or a mix of the two.  These treatments allowed her to study changes in cover and biomass.

Hallett used soil moisture probes and data loggers to characterize the treatment effects of this experiment and to parameterize models that predict rangeland response to climate change.  She says, “I wanted to verify that my rainfall treatments were getting a really strong soil moisture dynamic, and I found the shelters and the irrigation worked really well.”  Along with above-ground vegetation, she collected soil cores and looked at nutrient differences in conjunction with soil moisture.  Since her field site is located within the Sierra Foothills Research and Extension Center, Dr. Hallett was able to rely on precipitation data that was already measured on-site.  

Results

Dr. Hallett found that in areas experiencing moderate grazing, there was a strong species tradeoff between grasses and forbs.  She comments, “I had a seedbank that had both functional groups represented, and those tradeoffs did a lot to stabilize cover over time.”

When Dr. Hallett replicated the experiment in an area that had a history of low grazing, she found that the proportion of forbs wasn’t as high in the seedbank.  As a consequence, there was a major loss of cover in the dry plots.  She explains, “When the grass died, there weren’t many forbs to replace it, and you ended up with a lot of bare ground. The areas that were lightly grazed had more litter, so initially, the soil moisture was okay, but as the season progressed into a dry condition and the litter decomposed, there wasn’t enough new vegetation to stabilize the soil.”  As a result, Dr. Hallett thinks in low-grazed areas it’s important to have an intermediate level of litter. She says, “You need enough litter to increase soil moisture, but not so much that it would suppress germination of the forbs because as the season progresses and gets really dry, if you don’t have forbs in the system, you lose a lot of ground cover.”

Surprises Lead to A New Study

Dr. Hallett was surprised that within her three treatments there seemed to be differences in when the functional groups were drying down the soil.  This inspired new questions, leading her to use her dissertation data to generate a larger grant through the USDA.  Her new study will perform extensive rainfall manipulations to measure the effects of early-season versus late-season dryout, and vary species within those parameters.  She says, “One of the reasons you have grass years versus forb years is the timing of rainfall.  For instance, if you have a really dry fall, you tend to have more forbs because their seedlings are more drought resistant.  Conversely, if you have a wet fall, you tend to see more grasses because you have continual germination throughout the season. So, the timing of rainfall matters in terms of what species are in the system.  We are going to look at the coupling between the species that gets selected for the fall versus what would be able to grow well in the spring, and we will be studying how that affects a whole range of things such as ground cover, above-ground production for forage, below-ground investment of different functional groups, and how these things might relate to nutrient cycling and carbon storage.”

You can read more about Dr. Hallett’s rangeland research and her current projects here.  

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Jan 14

Using Soil Moisture Sensors on Humans?

Dr. Stuart Campbell, professor of Biomedical Engineering at Yale University has been toying with the idea of using soil moisture sensors to measure tissue edema in human subjects.

Patients had wrapped in gauze with a tube

Tissue edema occurs when too much fluid leaks from your capillaries into your tissue.

He says he got the idea from Dr. Ken Campbell, former professor of Bioengineering at Washington State University:  “I was explaining to Dr. Campbell about the sensors METER makes, and he pointed out that there are many diseases where you might want to measure someone’s tissue edema, and it would be interesting to see if you could use a soil sensor in a wearable device to help doctors monitor swelling in their patients, much like a heart monitor monitors heart activity.”

Tissue Edema:

Tissue edema occurs when too much fluid leaks from your capillaries into your tissue. Capillaries, the smallest blood vessels in your body, are somewhat leaky, allowing the exchange of nutrients and waste between the tissue and the blood. The fluid that surrounds the blood cells is free to exchange across the capillaries, and edema will occur when too much fluid leaks out of the circulatory system into the tissue.  Edema can be caused by things like heart disease, pregnancy, or standing on your feet all day.  

What Makes the Fluid Leak?

In soil, water moves from high water potential to low water potential. Similarly, there are forces inside the circulatory system that cause the transfer of fluid between capillaries.  Your blood vessels have a certain amount of pressure that is generated by your heart.  If your blood pressure goes up, it can cause edema. Dr. Stuart Campbell says, “The actual fluid pressure is part of what decides how much fluid is pushed out, but it’s not that simple. Your blood has large proteins that are too big to get out of the capillary. That means the more water that leaves the capillary and moves into the tissue, the more concentrated those proteins become, which lowers the water potential (or osmotic potential) of the blood. This delicate balance is what prevents too much water from leaking out.  However, if you have a disease that tips this balance, either through high blood pressure or a condition that allows those proteins to leak out of the capillary, edema would occur because you don’t have the osmotic potential pulling the water back into the capillary and keeping the proper balance.”

Stuart Campbell operating on the heart for a medical procedure

Dr. Campbell thought it would be interesting to figure out if he could monitor the edema of heart tissue during one of the procedures.

The Heart Experiment:

Dr. Campbell decided to see if a soil sensor would work to measure animal tissue when he was working as a summer student in the Visible Heart Lab at the University of Minnesota.  Campbell says, “Similar to a human heart transplant, this lab is able to keep pig hearts alive outside the body.  The problem, however, is that they use a manmade solution instead of blood, and that imitation blood is not ideal. If the composition of the fluid is not perfectly adjusted, you can have problems with your experiments.  I thought it would be interesting to figure out if we could monitor the edema of the heart tissue during one of the procedures. I hooked up the soil probe and used it in one experiment where I put it in contact with the heart while it was beating.  There was, in fact, a change in output of that signal during the experiment.  But, because I only got one chance at it, it was inconclusive as to whether this was indicative of an imbalance in the composition of our artificial blood substitute.”  

An Anecdotal Experiment:

Still curious to see if the idea would work, Dr. Campbell decided to try one more experiment: this time on his wife who was experiencing edema symptoms after childbirth.  He says, “It occurred to me that this was an opportunity to try out the soil moisture probe one more time to measure tissue edema.  So each day, I would measure her ankles, putting the probe in flat contact with her skin while tightening a strap gently.”  Dr. Campbell says he watched the swelling go down as the numbers on the probe got smaller, and comments, “It was anecdotal evidence that at least in extreme cases, you might be able to get the soil probe to work.  But I still have questions, such as, how would you make sure that the probe was always touching the skin in the same way?  And, if the person got sweaty, would that change the soil probe reading?”  

Nurse measuring heart rate

There are millions of people in this country who have heart failure.

Why the Experiments Should Continue:

Though Dr. Campbell hasn’t had time to pursue the experiment further, he feels that if the idea works, it has the potential to improve lives and save our nation billions of dollars.  He says, “There are millions of people in this country who have heart failure.  Maybe they’ve had a blockage in one of their coronary arteries, or perhaps their heart is worn out because of age. You can tell when someone is in heart failure because when they lie down to go to sleep at night, all that fluid makes its way slowly from the ankles, through the legs, the torso, and eventually into the chest. The problem is that the lungs are very delicate, and when you have edema in the lungs, it’s almost like you have pneumonia.  This type of sensor could be an easy way for people to monitor themselves and manage their fluid intake and diet after they get home from the hospital.”  Dr. Campbell says this helps the economy because if people don’t manage their fluids, they have to return to the hospital so they can be supervised to eat correctly and regain the proper fluid balance. This ends up costing the economy billions of dollars unnecessarily.  He concludes, “Perhaps people just need to follow instructions, but it’s possible with better monitoring that the situation can be improved.”

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Jan 7

Using The Salt Balance Approach to Measure Soil Drainage

Understanding the amount of drainage that comes out of the bottom of the root zone and infiltrates into groundwater recharge is a very difficult measurement to do well. Drain gauges do a good job of it but on a small scale. Large lysimeters do an even better job, but are extremely expensive and complex.  There is an economical alternative, however, called the salt balance approach to measuring drainage.

Soil profile underneath canola

Soil profile underneath canola

The Salt Balance Approach

Since the majority of non-fertilizer salts in the soil solution don’t get taken up by plants, this salt can be used in soil as a conservative tracer.  This means that whatever salt is applied to the soil through rainfall or irrigation water is either stored in the soil or leaches through the profile with the soil water, enabling us to use conservation of mass in our salt balance analysis. The electrical conductivity of water (ECw) is directly proportional to the salt concentration, so ECw can be used in place of salt concentration in this analysis.  If you measure the EC of the water that’s applied to the soil, either through irrigation or precipitation,  as well as the EC of the water that’s coming out of the bottom of your profile, then you can calculate what fraction of the applied water is being transpired by the plants, and what fraction is draining out of the bottom.  This method is useful for measuring water balance at field sites.

To illustrate this concept, let’s work through a simple example.  A particular field received 40 cm of water through precipitation and irrigation.  The average ECw of the precipitation and irrigation water is 0.5 dS/m.  Measurements of ECw draining from the soil profile below the root zone indicate an ECw of 2.0 dS/m.  The drainage or leaching fraction can be easily calculated as :

ECw(applied) / ECw(drained) = 0.5 dS/m / 2.0 dS/m = 0.25

The amount of water drained can also be easily calculated as:

Leaching fraction * applied water = 0.25 * 40 cm = 10 cm

Measuring Pore Water EC (ECw)

One challenge to this approach is the measurement of water electrical conductivity itself.  Bulk EC is a relatively simple measurement, and several types of soil water content sensors measure it as a basic sensor output.  However, the electrical conductivity of water, called pore water EC (ECw), is more complex.  Pore water EC requires that it be either estimated from the bulk EC and soil water content or that a sample of pore water be pulled from the soil matrix and measured.  When estimated, pore water EC can contain considerable error.  In addition, removing a water sample and measuring the pore water EC is not easy. 

To learn more about measuring EC, read our EC app guide.

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