Noninvasive Monitoring of Soil Static Characteristics and Dynamic States: A Case Study Highlighting Vegetation Effects on Agricultural Land

In this paper we present the results of seasonal monitoring and irrigation tests performed on an experimental farm in a semiarid region of Southern Sardinia. The goal of the study is to understand the soil-vegetation interactions and how they can affect the soil water balance, particularly in view of possible climatic changes. We used long-term electromagnetic induction (EMI)time lapse monitoring and short-term irrigation experiments monitored using electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and EMI, supported by time domain reflectometry (TDR) soil moisture measurements. Mapping of natural gamma-ray emission, texture analysis, and laboratory calibration of an electrical constitutive relationship on soil samples complete the dataset. We observe that the growth of vegetation, with the associated below-ground allocation of biomass, has a significant impact on the soil moisture dynamics. It is well known that vegetation extracts a large amount of water from the soil particularly during summe