Quasi-distributed fiber-optic in-situ monitoring technology for large-scale measurement of soil water content and its application

Accurate acquisition of in-situ soil water content is of great significance for mastering the water content distribution of unsaturated soil and understanding soil engineering properties. The actively heated fiber-optic (AHFO) method has recently become a research focus because of the capability to realize distributed and real-time measurement of soil water content. However, most reported AHFO systems have been coupled to distributed temperature sensing (DTS) which does not allow for remote measurements with high spatial resolution. In this paper, a new AHFO method based on the quasi-distributed fiber Bragg grating (AHFO-FBG) technique is proposed for the large-scale in-situ measurement of soil water content. An AHFO-FBG in-situ monitoring system is developed which consists of a sensor module, heating module, data acquisition and transmission module, and data processing module. The established system is applied to a loess slope in Yan'an City, Shaanxi Province, China to monitor its water content distribution in real time. The effectiveness of the monitoring system is verified and the water content distribution of the monitored loess slope are analysed. The in-situ measurement results indicate that in the spatial dimension, the water content in the top and bottom of the slope is low, and that near the scarp is high; in the time dimension, the water content in winter is low while that in autumn and spring is high. The monitored results also suggest that soil water evaporation in winter can significantly enhance the spatial distribution difference of soil water content.