Electromagnetic induction mapping at varied soil moisture reveals field-scale soil textural patterns and gravel lenses

Abstract

Knowledge of the spatial distribution of soil textural properties is important for determining soil moisture storage and soil hydraulic transport properties. Capturing field heterogeneity without exhaustive sampling and costly sample analysis is difficult. Our objective was to employ electromagnetic induction (EMI) mapping in low apparent electrical conductivity (EC_a) soils at varying soil water contents to capture time invariant properties such as soil texture. Georeferenced EC_a measurements were taken using a ground conductivity meter on six different days where volumetric water content (θ_v) varied from 0.11 to 0.23. The 50 m × 50 m field included a subsurface gravelly patch in an otherwise homogeneous silt-loam alluvial soil. Ordinary block kriging predicted EC_a at unsampled areas to produce 1-m resolution maps. Temporal stability analysis was used to divide the field into three distinct EC_a regions. Subsequent ground-truthing confirmed the lowest conductivity region correlated with coarse textured soil parent materials associated with a former high-energy alluvial depositional area. Combining maps using temporal stability analysis gives the clearest image of the textural difference. These maps could be informative for modeling, experimental design, sensor placement and targeted zone management strategies in soil science, ecology, hydrology, and agricultural applications.

Keywords

soil electrical conductivity / soil texture mapping / temporal stability analysis

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by an INRA SSGP Doctoral Fellowship from the Inland North-west Research Alliance (INRA) and by the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, approved as journal paper 8952. The authors express gratitude to Ian Riley for technical and grammatical corrections and to two anonymous reviewers who provided questions and suggestions for improving the manuscript.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Hiruy Abdu, David A. Robinson, Janis Boettinger, and Scott B. Jones declare that they have no conflict of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2017. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0