Spatial description of the soil water dynamic by the electrical resistivity at the field scale

International audience; Since recently, geophysical methods enable the monitoring of some soil characteristics on a continuous space with a high resolution. However the interpretation of electrical measurements is difficult because the geophysical data are influenced by many soil variables, that vary, or not, with time. Our objective was then to use spatial measurements of electrical resistivity, to define zones of homogeneous electrical resistivity, to interpret them in terms of evolution of water content, and to compare them with a soil map. Our assumption was then that the time variation of electrical resistivity at the field scale was only due to the evolution of the soil moisture in our studied field. A time monitoring of the soil electrical resistivity and the soil moisture was realized during the year 2006, at four dates, both by the MUCEP device (MultiContinous Electrical Profiling), that gives measurements on a whole field area, and by local gravimetric measurements of the soil water content. Homogeneous zones were defined directly from measurements for the electrical resistivity, and after ordinary kriging for the water content. Our analysis of the spatial and temporal variability has permitted to discriminate three temporal homogeneous zones, both for electrical resistivity and the water content, that were mainly related to the soil map. The use of electrical measurements enables to directly describe the spatial and temporal evolution of soil water content at the field scale, and to describe some hydric processes, like lateral flows or upward capillary flows that would be difficult to derive from soil maps.