The design of porous material sensors to measure the matric potential of water in soil

Summary In recent years the use of porous material sensors for matric potential, which were originally intended for soil drier than −100 kPa, has been extended to wet soils. In these wetter soils, unpredictable behaviour of the sensors has been reported. We have studied the design of porous material sensors of matric potential in soil and propose a hypothesis to explain this unpredictability, and suggest recommendations for a design of sensor which will behave more reliably. The development of an experimental porous material sensor of matric potential based on this design is described. It operates between 0 and −60 kPa, and both the drying and wetting moisture characteristics were measured. In this sensor the porous material was a ceramic and its water content was measured with a dielectric water content sensor. We tested a simple closed-form hysteresis model to convert the measured water content of the porous material into matric potential under laboratory conditions. This was shown to give better results than using a calibration based on the drying moisture characteristic curve, where the predicted matric potentials were too small. The use of the experimental sensors in the field environment is described. Both types of sensor were installed using the same procedure. As far as we are aware the experimental sensor described in this paper is the first porous material sensor of matric potential that can be installed in the same way as a conventional tensiometer. Both conventional tensiometers and the experimental porous material sensors gave similar estimates of matric potential.