Status: this preprint was under review for the journal HESS. A revision for further review has not been submitted.
Monitoring infiltration processes with high-resolution surface-based Ground-Penetrating Radar
P. Klenk,S. Jaumann,and K. Roth
Abstract. In this study, we present a series of high resolution Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) measurements monitoring two artificially induced infiltration pulses into two different sands with dual-frequency ground-based GPR. After the application of the second infiltration pulse, the water table in the subsoil was raised by pumping in water from below. The longterm relaxation of the system was then monitored over the course of several weeks. We focused on the capillary fringe reflection and on observed variations in soil water content as derived from direct wave travel times. We discuss the advantages of this dual-frequency approach and show the attainable precision in longterm monitoring of such relaxation processes. Reaching a relative precision of better than 0.001 [–] in water content, we can clearly discern the relaxation of the two investigated sands.
Received: 06 Nov 2015 – Discussion started: 20 Nov 2015
Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this preprint. The responsibility to include appropriate place names lies with the authors.
The main goal of our work is to quantify near-surface soil water dynamics by advancing non-invasive measurement methods such as surface-based Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR). Here, we observe soil infiltration processes with a novel dual-frequency GPR system. The high precision of our approach allows (i) closely investigating the dynamic evolution of specific subsurface signals in different materials and (ii) monitoring the longterm effect of infiltration pulses over the course of several months.
The main goal of our work is to quantify near-surface soil water dynamics by advancing...