Assessing Soil Moisture of a Heterogeneous Hillslope by Time Lapse Electromagnetic Mapping

Knowledge about spatial and temporal variations of soil moisture is an important prerequisite for understanding and modelling the movement of large hillslopes. Traditionally, soil moisture is assessed by soil sample taking at a number of selected locations. Alternatively, geophysical and geoecological mapping have proven to be valuable tools when assessing soil moisture distributions. Here, we survey the Heumös hillslope in Western Austria using time-lapse electromagnetic monitoring. We can largely link relative electrical conductivity changes between different geophysical data acquisition campaigns to relative soil moisture variations as determined previously by geoecological soil moisture mapping relying on vegetation analysis.