A Technical Design Approach to Soil Moisture Content Measurement

Abstract

Soil moisture is an important type of data in many fields; ranging from agriculture to environmental monitoring. Three soil samples were collected at definite proportions to represent the three basic soil types (sandy, loamy and clay soils). The moisture contents of these soil samples were analyzed using the thermogravimetric method. This paper employed the use of PC-based soil moisture content measuring system in order to obtain accurate results. It works with the principle that there is an increase or decrease in soil conductivity as soil moisture increases or decreases respectively. The constructed prototype was used to test the three soil samples as well and the results were compared with that of the thermogravimetric method. The results gotten from this prototype shows the relationship between conductivity and moisture content of the soil. The system was well calibrated in order to get standard readings and conquer the problem of transistor amplification at the signal pick up stage. This therefore makes it possible to get fast an accurate results without wasting much time and energy.