Hydrology and Earth System Sciences www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net 1027-5606 1607-7938 14 6 2010 10.5194/hess-14-1007-2010 http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/14/1007/2010/ http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/14/1007/2010/hess-14-1007-2010.html http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/14/1007/2010/hess-14-1007-2010.pdf 1007 1020 2010-06-24 A quality assessment of Spatial TDR soil moisture measurements in homogenous and heterogeneous media with laboratory experiments T. Graeff graeff@uni-potsdam.de E. Zehe S. Schlaeger M. Morgner A. Bauer R. Becker B. Creutzfeldt A. Bronstert Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Section Hydrology/Climatology, University of Potsdam, Germany Institute of Water and Environment, Department of Hydrology and River Basin Management, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany SCHLAEGER – mathematical solutions & engineering, Horn-Bad Meinberg, Germany Rhine-Waal University of Applied Science, Germany Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ, Section 5.4: Hydrology, Potsdam, Germany Investigation of transient soil moisture profiles yields valuable information of near- surface processes. A recently developed reconstruction algorithm based on the telegraph equation allows the inverse estimation of soil moisture profiles along coated, three rod TDR probes. Laboratory experiments were carried out to prove the results of the inversion and to understand the influence of probe rod deformation and solid objects close to the probe in heterogeneous media. 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