Combined Measurement of Soil Permittivity and Electrical Conductivity Using UAV‐Based Ground Penetrating Radar

Cheng, Qinbo and Cheng, Yu and Ma, Zhijin and Binley, Andrew and Liu, Jintao and Zhang, Zhicai and Huang, Feng and Chen, Xi (2025) Combined Measurement of Soil Permittivity and Electrical Conductivity Using UAV‐Based Ground Penetrating Radar. Water Resources Research, 61 (10): e2024WR039. ISSN 0043-1397

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Abstract

Plain Language Summary: Soil water content and salinity are critical for agricultural productivity, ecosystem health, and sustainable land management. Traditional methods for measuring these properties, such as lab‐based soil sampling or ground sensors, are labor‐intensive, spatially limited, or disruptive. Remote sensing offers broader coverage but struggles to balance resolution, cost, and accuracy. This study introduces a novel unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based system carrying ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) with multi‐frequency antennas to non‐invasively map soil electrical properties (relative permittivity and electrical conductivity), which are empirically linked to water content and salinity. Unlike complex inversion‐based approaches, this method uses surface reflection coefficients from GPR scans, enabling rapid, high‐resolution field‐scale surveys. Field tests in China's Yangtze River riparian zone and Yellow Sea salinized areas demonstrated strong agreement between UAV‐GPR estimates and in situ soil sensor data. The approach avoids soil disturbance and costly fieldwork, addressing gaps in scalable, precise soil monitoring. By enabling detailed spatial mapping of soil variability, this UAV‐GPR method supports precision agriculture (e.g., irrigation optimization), soil health assessment, and salinization management. It bridges the resolution gap between localized sensors and coarse satellite data, offering a practical tool for advancing hydrological research and sustainable land‐use practices.