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Abstract

Climate change has had an impact on soil cultivation and sowing methods, as precipitation levels and dry periods have changed. In addition, agricultural areas have become considerably larger on average in recent years due to numerous farm closures, particularly in Europe, and a simultaneous increase in the area per farm. This has increased the inhomogeneity of arable land in terms of water absorption and retention capacity. Against this background, the need for real-time monitoring of soil moisture, particularly during cultivation, is more important than ever. Existing methods are not suitable for this purpose as they are costly and do not have the resolution to monitor site-specific soil moisture. This study aims to test the possibility of measuring changes of soil moisture using vibro-acoustic sensors during soil cultivation. The advantage of measuring the soil water content via the vibration of the cultivator coulters is that this indirect method allows the sensors to be implemented on the tillage machine, thus enabling spatial and continuous in-process control instead of just a point recording of the soil water content. Specifically, this study investigated the possibility to monitor soil water content by measuring the vibration acceleration on a cultivator share. The results showed that sensors at different positions of the device had equally meaningful signals. Additionally, the R2 value of the linear regression ranged from 0.645, with a root mean square value up to 0.933 % volume. Overall this study highlights the feasibility to monitor soil water content by using vibroacoustic sensors, more specifically piezoelectric accelerometers, during soil field operations such as tillage and sowing.

Keywords

Vibroacoustics; Structure-borne-sound; Piezoelectric accelerometers; Real-time soil moisture detection, cultivator; Seed drill

Published in

Soil Advances
2025, volume: 3, article number: 100040

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Soil Science

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilad.2025.100040

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/141740