In situ estimation of soil hydraulic and hydrodispersive properties by inversion of electromagnetic induction measurements and soil hydrological modeling

Abstract. Soil hydraulic and hydrodispersive properties are necessary for modeling water solute fluxes in agricultural environmental systems. Despite the major efforts developing methods (e.g., laboratory-based, pedotransfer functions), their characterization at applicative scales remains an imperative requirement. Accordingly, this paper proposes a noninvasive situ method integrating electromagnetic induction (EMI) hydrological to estimate soil transport plot scale. To end, we carried out two sequential infiltration experiments conducted time-lapse EMI surveys using CMD Mini-Explorer examine how well methodology can be used (i) monitor content dynamic after irrigation van Genuchten–Mualem parameters from experiment as (ii) concentration dispersivity experiment. We then compared results with those estimated by direct time domain reflectometry (TDR) tensiometer probe measurements. The significantly underestimated distribution observed TDR, but evolved similarly over time. This introduced main effects on obtained methods: similar retention curve shapes, saturated method, resulting scaled when TDR method; EMI-based measuring actual end of probes or weighing samples; almost overlapping conductivity curves, expected considering that shape primarily reflects changes Nevertheless, estimations were found fairly accurate comparison measurements