A Novel and Non-Invasive Approach to Evaluating Soil Moisture without Soil Disturbances: Contactless Ultrasonic System

Abstract

Soil moisture has been considered a key variable in governing the terrestrial ecosystem. However, it is challenging to preserve indigenous soil characteristics using conventional soil moisture monitoring methods that require maximum soil contacts. To overcome this issue, we developed a non-destructive method of evaluating soil moisture using a contactless ultrasonic system. This system was designed to measure leaky Rayleigh waves at the air–soil joint-half space. The influences of soil moisture on leaky Rayleigh waves were explored under sand, silt, and clay in a controlled experimental design. Our results showed that there were strong relationships between the energy and amplitude of leaky Rayleigh waves and soil moisture for all three soil cases. These results can be explained by reduced soil strengths during evaporation processes for coarse soil particles as opposed to fine soil particles. To evaluate soil moisture based on the dynamic parameters and wave properties obtained from the observed leaky Rayleigh waves, we used the random forest model. The accuracy of predicted soil moisture was exceptional for test data sets under all soil types (R2 ≥ 0.98, RMSE ≤ 0.0089 m3 m−3). That is, our study demonstrated that the leaky Rayleigh waves had great potential to continuously assess soil moisture variations without soil disturbances.