Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS 7000, Australia.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Dec 4;20(23):6934. doi: 10.3390/s20236934.
The measurement of soil moisture in agriculture is currently dominated by a small number of sensors, the use of which is greatly limited by their small sampling volume, high cost, need for close soil-sensor contact, and poor performance in saline, vertic and stony soils. This review was undertaken to explore the plethora of novel and emerging soil moisture sensors, and evaluate their potential use in agriculture. The review found that improvements to existing techniques over the last two decades are limited, and largely restricted to frequency domain reflectometry approaches. However, a broad range of new, novel and emerging means of measuring soil moisture were identified including, actively heated fiber optics (AHFO), high capacity tensiometers, paired acoustic / radio / seismic transceiver approaches, microwave-based approaches, radio frequency identification (RFID), hydrogels and seismoelectric approaches. Excitement over this range of potential new technologies is however tempered by the observation that most of these technologies are at early stages of development, and that few of these techniques have been adequately evaluated in situ agricultural soils.
目前，农业土壤湿度的测量主要依赖于少数几种传感器，这些传感器的采样体积小、成本高、需要与土壤紧密接触，并且在盐渍土、粘性土和多石土壤中的性能较差，因此其使用受到了极大的限制。本综述旨在探索大量新出现的土壤湿度传感器，并评估它们在农业中的潜在用途。综述发现，过去二十年中对现有技术的改进非常有限，并且主要局限于频域反射计方法。然而，已经确定了广泛的新的、新颖的和新兴的土壤湿度测量方法，包括主动加热光纤（AHFO）、高容量张力计、成对的声/无线电/地震收发器方法、基于微波的方法、射频识别（RFID）、水凝胶和地震电方法。然而，由于观察到这些新技术中的大多数都处于早期开发阶段，而且这些技术中很少有在原位农业土壤中得到充分评估，因此对这一系列潜在新技术的兴奋之情有所减弱。
