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Performance of the Commercial WET Capacitance Sensor as Compared with Time Domain Reflectometry in Volcanic Soils

Instituto Canario de Investigaciones Agrarias (ICIA), Dep. Suelos y Riegos, Apdo. 60, La Laguna, 38200 Tenerife, Spain. The mention of trade or manufacturer names is made for information only and does not imply an endorsement, recommendation, or exclusion by ICIA-Agricultural Research Institute

Correspondence: ^* Corresponding author (cregalad{at}icia.es).

Received for publication 21 September 2006. Among different alternatives, dielectric capacitance sensors may provide simultaneous readings of the volumetric water content and the soil solution electrical conductivity in the same sample volume at low cost. Reliability of capacitive sensors may be questioned, however, due to the low signal frequency at which they work, and also because of soil electrical conductivity effects on the water content estimation. In this study we evaluated the commercial capacitive WET Sensor (Delta-T Devices Ltd., Burwell, UK) compared with time domain reflectometry (TDR) in three volcanic soils with different textures. Although the WET Sensor uses internally the Hilhorst approach for describing the relationship between soil moisture and bulk and pore water electrical conductivity, results suggest that the Vogeler model is a better choice for the soils studied. The sensor provides good estimation of the bulk electrical conductivity, but determination of soil water content is biased. Thus, we propose an alternative empirical equation to determine the volumetric water content from the WET Sensor readings, the soil bulk density, and an estimate of the sensor's effective frequency.

Abbreviations: AIC, Akaike information criterion • EC, electrical conductivity • TDR, time domain reflectometry.