Soil moisture mapping using GPR for pavement applications

Abstract

The analysis of soil moisture variability is important for many applications, from civil engineering issues to agricultural and Earth sciences problems. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is a very flexible and wide-ranging instrument for this scope at a limited scale, but generally the reliability of the local predictions needs to be validated. Moreover, in the field of pavement engineering, high spatial variations of moisture can produce unexpected damages of the road bearing courses. In this study, an in-field validation of GPR measurements from capacitance probes data was carried out. This study contributes to the research in the field of pavement engineering to prevent damages and plan effective management.