Effect of Time-Domain Reflectometry probe location on soil moisture measurement during wetting and drying processes

In this paper studies on the impact of the location of Time-Domain Reflectometry probes in soil samples on the moisture measurement are presented. In particular, we were interested if the commonly accepted assumption that moisture measurements performed by TDR probes correctly average the value of the soil water content in a soil sample. Soil samples having different physical properties, both undisturbed and disturbed, were used. Our results show that the soil moisture measurement depends on the placement of the TDR probe in the sample, and a TDR probe placed vertically measures the arithmetic mean of soil moisture for the whole sample, for both the wetting and the drying cycles. This result is general and does not depend on the analyzed sample.