Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment

On-the-go soil mechanical strength measurement at different soil depths

Author(s):

Yousef Abbaspour-Gilandeh

Recieved Date: 2009-05-17, Accepted Date: 2009-10-11

Abstract:

Soil compaction limits root penetration below the plowing depth, reduces yields and makes plants more susceptible to drought stress. Applying uniform-depth tillage over the entire field to manage the soil compaction may be either too shallow or too deep and it can be costly. Variable-depth or site-specific tillage technology optimizes soil physical properties only where the tillage is needed by applying tillage at the required depth. Therefore, there is a need for a technology to determine the tillage depth based on soil mechanical strength at different depths of soil. Since soil cone penetrometers require a stop-and-go operation that can be time-consuming and costly, on-the-go measurement methods of soil mechanical strength have been investigated by some researchers. A measuring system with multiple instrumented shanks was designed and built to measure mechanical impedance of soil at different depths over the entire top 40 cm of the soil profile while moving through the soil. This system allows shanks for the simultaneous measurement of soil mechanical resistance at four depths, while moving through the field. The design allowed 10 cm of measurement depth per instrumented shank. Each instrumented shank consisted of an extended octagonal load cells. Each shank was calibrated in the lab by applying known forces and measuring output voltages. DT800 data logger (data Taker Co., UK) was used for data collection. Soil strength data was collected at 150 Hz. The instrumented measurement system was calibrated against cone penetrometer readings at same depth intervals by collecting intensive geo-referenced penetrometer data from a predetermined path and then running instrumented system with multiple shanks in the same path. The penetrometer data was averaged over 10 cm intervals and compared to the average force measurements from each instrumented shank of measurement system. There was a correlation with R² = 0.77 (the least correlation coefficient) at 0-10 cm depth and R² = 0.83 (the most correlation coefficient) at 30-40 cm depth between soil cone penetrometer data and instrumented measurement system values.

Keywords:

Site-specific tillage, precision farming, soil mechanical strength, penetrometer

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Journal: Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment
Year: 2009
Volume: 7
Issue: 3&4
Category: Environment
Pages: 696-699

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