Application of Electromagnetic Induction to Monitor Changes in Soil Electrical Conductivity Profiles in Arid Agriculture

Abstract

In this research, multi-configuration electromagnetic induction (EMI) measurements were conducted in a corn field to estimate variation in soil electrical conductivity profiles in the roots zone. Electromagnetic forward model based on the full solution of Maxwell's equation was used to simulate the apparent electrical conductivity measured with EMI system (the CMD mini-Explorer). Joint inversion of multi-configuration EMI measurements were performed to estimate the vertical soil electrical conductivity profiles. The inversion minimizes the misfit between the measured and modeled soil apparent electrical conductivity by DiffeRential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM) algorithm, which is based on Bayesain approach. Results indicate that soil electrical conductivity profiles have low values close to the corn plants, which indicates loss of soil moisture due to the root water uptake. These results offer valuable insights into future potential and emerging challenges in the development of joint analysis of multi-configuration EMI measurements to retrieve effective soil electrical conductivity profiles.