Laboratory Performance of Five Selected Soil Moisture Sensors Applying Factory and Own Calibration Equations for Two Soil Media of Different Bulk Density and Salinity Levels

Non-destructive soil water content determination is a fundamental component for many agricultural and environmental applications. The accuracy and costs of the sensors define the measurement scheme and the ability to fit the natural heterogeneous conditions. The aim of this study was to evaluate five commercially available and relatively cheap sensors usually grouped with impedance and FDR sensors. ThetaProbe ML2x (impedance) and ECH(2)O EC-10, ECH(2)O EC-20, ECH(2)O EC-5, and ECH(2)O TE (all FDR) were tested on silica sand and loess of defined characteristics under controlled laboratory conditions. The calibrations were carried out in nine consecutive soil water contents from dry to saturated conditions (pure water and saline water). The gravimetric method was used as a reference method for the statistical evaluation (ANOVA with significance level 0.05). Generally, the results showed that our own calibrations led to more accurate soil moisture estimates. Variance component analysis arranged the factors contributing to the total variation as follows: calibration (contributed 42%), sensor type (contributed 29%), material (contributed 18%), and dry bulk density (contributed 11%). All the tested sensors performed very well within the whole range of water content, especially the sensors ECH(2)O EC-5 and ECH(2)O TE, which also performed surprisingly well in saline conditions.