BBAuthors: Peng, W.; Advisor: -; Participants: Lu, Y.; Xie, X.; Ren, T.; Horton, R. (2019)
The thermo‐time domain reflectometry (thermo‐TDR) technique is valuable for monitoring in situ soil water content (θ), thermal properties, bulk density (ρb), porosity (n), and air‐filled porosity (na) in the vadose zone. However, the previous thermo‐TDR sensor has several weaknesses, including limited precision of TDR waveforms due to the short probe length, small measurement volume, and thermal property estimation errors resulting from finite probe properties not accounted for by the heat pulse method. We have developed a new thermo‐TDR sensor design for monitoring θ, thermal properties, ρb, n, and na. The new sensor has a robust heater probe (outer diameter of 2.38 mm and length of ... 
