Pedosphere 14(3): 273--282, 2004
ISSN 1002-0160/CN 32-1315/P
©2004 Soil Science Society of China
Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science Press
| Exploring soil layers and water tables with ground-penetrating radar |
K. ROTH1 , U. WOLLSCHLÄGER1, CHENG Zhu-Hua1,2 and ZHANG Jia-Bao2 |
1 Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg (Germany). E-mail: kurtt.roth@iup.uni-heidelberg.de;
2 Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008 (China) |
| ABSTRACT |
| Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has been used predominantly for environments with low electrical conductivity like freshwater aquifers, glaciers, or dry sandy soils. The objective of the present study was to explore its application for mapping in subsurface agricultural soils to a depth of several meters. For a loamy sand and a clayey site on the North China Plain, clay inclusions in the sand were detected; the thickness, inclination, and continuity of the confining clay and silt layers was assessed; and a local water table was mapped. Direct sampling (soil coring and profiling) in the top meter and independent measurement of the water table were utilized to confirm the findings. Also, effective estimates of the dielectric number for the site with the dielectric number of moist clayey soils depending strongly on frequency were obtained. Thus, important properties of soils, like the arrangement and type of layers and in particular their continuity and inclination, could be explored with moderate efforts for rather large areas to help find optimal locations for the time-consuming and expensive measurements which would be necessary to detail a model of the subsurface. |
| Key Words: ground-penetrating radar, soil layers, water table |
| Citation: Roth, K., WollschlÄger, U., Cheng, Z. H. and Zhang, J. B. 2004. Exploring soil layers and water tables with ground-penetrating radar. Pedosphere. 14(3): 273-282. |
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