Soil moisture monitoring across space-time scales: Theory, advances, and applications.

The ability of soil to transmit water, solute, gas or energy is strongly dependent on water content. Also, soil moisture controls fundamental processes such as microbial activity and partitioning of incoming solar energy into sensible, latent, and surface heat fluxes. As a result, soil moisture measurements are routinely carried out in a wide variety of disciplines, including soil physics, hydrology, meteorology and microbiology. In view of the rapid progress in the field, the seminar on soil moisture measurements focuses mainly on dielectric methods, with special emphasis on TDR and Capacitance sensors. The seminar is intended as an opportunity to inform the attendees of the characteristics and limitations of the different technologies, and to discuss the accuracy that can be expected from each under varying environmental conditions and soil kinds.