A Sensor Probe with Active and Passive Humidity Management for In Situ Soil CO Monitoring.

Soil CO concentration and flux measurements are important in diverse fields, including geoscience, climate science, soil ecology, and agriculture. However, practitioners in these fields face difficulties with existing soil CO gas probes, which have had problems with high costs and frequent failures when deployed. Confronted with a recent research project's need for long-term in-soil CO monitoring at a large number of sites in harsh environmental conditions, we developed our own CO logging system to reduce expense and avoid the expected failures of commercial instruments. Our newly developed soil probes overcome the central challenge of soil gas probes-surviving continuous exposure to soil moisture while remaining open to soil gases-via three approaches: a 3D printed housing (economical for small-scale production) following design principles that correct the usual water permeability flaw of 3D printed materials; passive moisture protection via a hydrophobic, CO-permeable PTFE membrane; and active moisture protection via a low-power micro-dehumidifier. Our CO instrumentation performed well and yielded a high-quality dataset that includes signals related to a prescribed fire as well as seasonal and diel cycles. We expect our technology to support underground CO monitoring in fields where it is already practiced and stimulate its expansion into diverse new fields.