Soil salinity and TDR

Many superintendents have adopted the use of time-domain reflectrometry (TDR e.g. Field Scout TDR350) to improve soil moisture monitoring and management. Unfortunately, TDR technology is known to be sensitive to soil salinity, providing erroneously high volumetric water content (VWC) values when high soil salts are present. To evaluate the impact of soil salinity on TDR readings, Leinaur et. al. measured VWC at various soil salinty levels. They found that VWC readings were sufficiently accurate as long as soil salinity did…