Wissenschaftliche ArbeitenBetween March and April 2010, Dipl.-Phys. Patrick Klenk from the Institute of Environmental Physics, Heidelberg University, has spent six weeks at the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, CAS, Urumqi, teaching a course in applied geophysics to nine Chinese master and doctoral students.
His course included two weeks of theoretical foundations, three weeks of practical field experiments at Fukang desert research station and two weeks of data treatment. The main focus of the course has been determining field-scale near-surface soil moisture content using different electromagnetic geophysical methods like Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Time-Domain Reflectometry.
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The practical field measurements, carried out in March and April, covered a wide spectrum of different field conditions in a (semi-)desert area. In March, the soil was still frozen to a depth of around 1.5 m, with some 30-50 cm of snow on top. After thawing, the topsoil reached volumetric water contents of around 0.2 m³/m³ at the beginning of April. Subsequently, due to the strong radiative forcing, the topsoil reached an almost completely dry state (with volumetric water contents below 0.07 m³/m³) by the end of the month.
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Explaning the prepared measurement s in the field |
At different places several profiles were measured |
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Preparation for the TDR measurements |
TDR measurements |
