Simultaneous determination of the dielectric relaxation behavior and soilwater characteristic curve of undisturbed soil samples

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to simultaneously analyze soil dielectric relaxation and water retention characteristics, enabling better understanding of coupled hydraulic and dielectric soil properties for improved parameter estimation.

Contribution

A new analysis methodology is developed for concurrent determination of soil dielectric relaxation behavior and water characteristic curve from undisturbed samples.

Findings

Enables systematic analysis of coupled hydraulic and dielectric properties.

Facilitates development of pedotransfer functions using broadband HF-EM measurements.

Provides insights into interface effects on soil electromagnetic and hydraulic behavior.

Abstract

The frequency dependence of soil electromagnetic properties contain valuable information of the porous material due to strong contributions to the dielectric relaxation behavior by interactions between aqueous pore solution and mineral phases due to interface effects. Soil hydraulic properties such as matric potential are also influenced by different surface bonding forces due to interface processes. For this reason, a new analysis methodology was developed, which allows a simultaneous determination of the soil water characteristic curve and the dielectric relaxation behavior of undisturbed soil samples. This opens the possibility to systematically analyze coupled hydraulic/dielectric soil properties for the development of pedotransfer functions to estimate physico-chemical parameters with broadband HF-EM measurement techniques.