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A methodology to identify representative configurations of sensors for monitoring soil moisture

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Abstract

Soil moisture is the key link among hydroecological compartments, responding dynamically to sequences of atmospheric processes and management conditions and modulating physical, chemical, and biological processes in the soil. Currently, there are a variety of monitoring techniques to measure, directly or indirectly, the soil moisture. However, some practical issues remain open like the definition a priori of the number, location and depth of the monitoring points, and the impact of failing or poor performance soil moisture sensors. Here, we present a set of techniques, namely Δθ time series, wavelet filtering, and time stability, to identify representative points and monitoring depths through an analysis of hourly soil moisture time series for different configuration of the monitoring network. We used real data from a monitoring network consisting of seven monitoring points, each one with four EC-5 probes (Decagon Devices Inc., Pullman, WA) at 20, 40, 60, and 100 cm. The use of simple time series of Δθ allowed us to assess the spatiotemporal influence of the monitoring points, while the wavelet periodograms allowed us to get insight about the response of the monitoring points at different time scales. Both methods are easy to implement or adapt to specific conditions, being coherent to the results derived from time stability analysis. For our case study, we concluded that we could reallocate 16 sensors (out of 28) without a significant loss of information. However, the final decision strongly relies on a deep knowledge of the site features and the objectives of the monitoring network.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to express our sincere gratitude to two anonymous reviewers who provided valuable comments that resulted in improvements to the manuscript. This research was funded by CONICYT Chile through FONDECYT Grant 11090032. We are grateful to Dr. Shäfli for providing the MATLAB ® codes needed to perform the wavelet analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Water Resources, University of Concepcion, Concepcion, Chile

    Diego Rivera, José Luis Arumí & Marco Sandoval

  2. Escuela Politécnica del Ejército, Quito, Ecuador

    Stalin Granda

  3. Institute of Water Resources Management, Hydrology and Agricultural Hydraulic Engineering, Leibniz University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Max Billib

Authors
  1. Diego Rivera
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  2. Stalin Granda
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  3. José Luis Arumí
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  4. Marco Sandoval
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  5. Max Billib
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Correspondence to Diego Rivera.

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Rivera, D., Granda, S., Arumí, J.L. et al. A methodology to identify representative configurations of sensors for monitoring soil moisture. Environ Monit Assess 184, 6563–6574 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-011-2441-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-011-2441-8

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