iSOIL – Integration of Geophysical Technologies in Measuring Platforms

We present work that was done within the EU-level project iSOIL “Interactions between soil related sciences – Linking geophysics, soil science and digital soil mapping”. iSOIL focuses on improving and developing fast and reliable mapping approaches of soil properties, soil functions, and soil degradation threats. This requires the improvement and integration of advanced soil sampling approaches, geophysical and spectroscopic measurement techniques, as well as pedometric and pedophysical approaches. Integration of geophysical technologies in measuring platforms allow a rapid and economical feasible mapping of large areas with complementary parameters. Application of techniques and their combinations will improve to a great extent the significance of the resulting digital maps. Performance tests and a quantitative data evaluation, e.g. of electromagnetical data, are necessary for further integration and field application of mobile geophysical platforms. The data quality needs to be analyzed with respect to technical parameters of instruments, survey speed and possible interference between sensors and towing vehicle. An experiment was designed as first step towards a efficient mobile sensing of electromagnetical data. Results of this first experiment are presented here to illustrate challenges of iSOIL concerning measuring technologies. Furthermore we present data of different sensor types resulting in information about subsurface heterogeneities.