RT Journal Article SR Electronic(1) A1 Müller, Martin A1 Mohnke, Oliver A1 Schmalholz, Jürgen A1 Yaramanci, UgurYR 2003 T1 Moisture assessment with small‐scale geophysics‐the Interurban project JF Near Surface Geophysics, VO 1 IS 4 SP 173 OP 181 DO https://doi.org/10.3997/1873-0604.2003008 PB European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, SN 1873-0604, AB ABSTRACT Urban soils are subject to strong variations in environmental conditions, such as water flow, solute transport and heat budget. The INTERURBAN research project has been set up to investigate the dynamics of water and solutes at urban locations with particular attention to spatial heterogeneity, organic soil substance, and soil‐biological transformation processes in the unsaturated zone. The objectives of INTERURBAN also define the tasks for geophysics: the development of non‐invasive procedures to map water distribution, water dynamics and important structural parameters at small scales. This paper focuses on the development of a geophysical methodology as a tool for soil research. Approaches to adapting geophysical methods for particular objectives in the framework of the project have been successful. Soil moisture could be derived from ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) in combination with timedomain reflectometry (TDR), high‐resolution direct‐current geoelectrics (DC on a dm scale) could be realized and a newly developed direct‐push spectral induced‐polarization (SIP) probe delivered high‐quality data. The resistivities and phases derived from the direct‐push SIP data correlate very well with the water content and decay times derived from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements performed in the laboratory on a core from the same site. For DC geoelectrics and SIP, the layout of the sensors was a customized high‐resolution multi‐electrode configuration (a comb of electrodes with an electrode spacing of 5 cm) and the influence of the short electrode spacing (line electrode) was corrected for. For GPR metal plates were buried at a known depth to allow monitoring of the traveltime by means of water content. Furthermore, the ground wave has been used to determine the shallow water content which correlates well with TDR measurements. For surface NMR (SNMR), smaller loops and excitation intensities were used to enhance the resolution of the method for shallow depths., UL https://www.earthdoc.org/content/journals/10.3997/1873-0604.2003008