I want to know the soil moisture content. However, these moisture probes are expenive. Instead, I have a relative humidity data logger that I want to use for the soil experiment. How can I obtain the moisture content by using data from the relative humidity logger? I'm a biologist. So if you can explain the conversions in a simple manner -- I would much appreciate it!
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$\begingroup$ Would it help if you knew how to obtain the moisture content of air given its relative humidity and temperature? $\endgroup$– Bob DCommented Apr 9, 2020 at 23:01
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$\begingroup$ Sure. Would we be able to calculate soil moisture from air moisture data? $\endgroup$– phynerdCommented Apr 10, 2020 at 13:16
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$\begingroup$ The moisture content of air and the water content of a soil or material sample can be to my knowledge completely unrelated; at the least the water content of the soil sample will lag behind air moisture levels significantly. How much depends on porosity and the thickness of the soil sample and ambient temperature $\endgroup$– planetmakerCommented Feb 15 at 9:18
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This would only work if the soil was in a closed container with your humidity probe (not say using a weather station and using atmospheric measurements of rel. humidity to infer soil moisture). It might be the case that you could make some inferences about the very thin layer of soil in contact with the atmosphere, but that's about it.
At the lab scale, we use what is called a chilled mirror hygrometer to measure the soil moisture of fairly dry soil specimens.
Would need more info about your experimental setup to know if this would even be a possibility.
