Determination of soil evaporation fluxes using distributed temperature sensing methods

Abstract:

The dynamics of evaporation fluxes in arid soils is an unresolved complex phenomenon that has a major impact on the basin’s water availability. In arid zones, evaporation controls moisture contents near the soil surface and drives liquid water and water vapor fluxes through the vadose zone, playing a critical role in both the hydrological cycle and energy balance. However, determining soil evaporation in arid zones is a difficult undertaking. Thus, it is important to develop new measuring techniques that can determine evaporation fluxes.

In the last decade, distributed temperature sensing (DTS) methods have been successfully used to investigate a wide range of hydrologic applications. In particular, DTS methods have been used indirectly to monitor soil moisture. Two methods have been developed: the passive and the active method. In the active mode, the DTS system uses cables with metal elements and a voltage difference is applied at the two ends to of the cable to heat it up for a defined time-period. Then, the cumulative temperature increase along the cable is computed and soil moisture is determined by using an empirical relation. DTS technology has also been used to determine water fluxes in porous media, but so far no efforts have been made to determine evaporation fluxes.

Here, we investigate the feasibility of using the active DTS method to determine soil evaporation fluxes. To achieve this objective, column experiments were designed to study evaporation from sandy soils with shallow water tables. The soil columns were instrumented with traditional temperature and time-domain-reflectometry probes, and an armored fiber-optic cable that allows using the active method to estimate the soil moisture profile. In the experiments, the water table can be fixed at different depths and soil evaporation can be estimated by measuring the water added to the constant-head reservoir that feeds the column. Thus, allowing the investigation of soil evaporation fluxes from DTS measurements. The experiments consider different water table levels and meteorological conditions similar to those observed in arid zones with shallow groundwater tables. The experimental data will be used to estimate liquid water and water-vapor fluxes in porous media and to assess if DTS methods are suitable for studying soil evaporation fluxes.