An Overview of Soil Moisture and Salinity Sensors for Digital Agriculture Applications

Abstract

Soil salinity and the water crisis are imposing significant challenges to more than 100 countries as dominant factors of agricultural productivity decline. Given the rising trend of climate change and the need to increase agricultural production, it is crucial to execute appropriate management strategies in farmlands to address salinity and water deficiencies. Ground-based soil moisture and salinity sensors, as well as remote sensing technologies in satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be used for large-scale soil mapping with high accuracy, play a pivotal role in precision agriculture as advantageous soil condition monitoring instruments. Several barriers, such as expensive rates and a lack of systematic networks, may hinder or even adversely impact the progression of agricultural digitalization. As a result, integrating proximal equipment with remote sensing and Internet of things (IoT) capabilities has been shown to be a promising approach to improving soil monitoring reliability and efficiency. This chapter is an attempt to describe the pros and cons of various soil sensors, with the objective of promoting IoT technology in digital agriculture and smart farming.