MAPPING SOIL PROFILES USING A CONTINUOUS GALVANIC CONTACT RESISTIVITY SCANNING APPROACH

Apparent soil electrical conductivity (ECa) is the most frequently used proximal soil sensing measurement used to delineate relatively homogeneous areas of an agricultural landscape. Since ECa changes in response to a number of influential soil properties, direct use of such measurements has been limited. Changes of soil with depth (layering) have been viewed as a key pedological phenomenon that affects surface-based ECa measurements. The proposed continuous ECa scanner was developed to allow implementing conventional galvanic contact soil resistivity measurement technique to gather information on soil depth with greater details than a series of fixed distance electrodes commonly used in practice.