Junliang Fan

Using electrical resistivity tomography to differentiate sapwood from heartwood: application to conifers

Estimating sapwood area is one of the main sources of error when upscaling point scale sap flow measurements to whole-tree water use. In this study, the potential use of electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) to determine the sapwood-heartwood (SW-HW) boundary is investigated for Pinus elliottii Engelm var. elliottii × Pinus caribaea Morelet var. hondurensis growing in a subtropical climate. Specifically, this study investigates: (i) how electrical resistivity is correlated to either wood moisture content, or electrolyte concentration, or both, and (ii) how the SW-HW boundary is defined in terms of electrical resistivity. Tree cross-sections at breast height are analysed using ERT before being felled and the cross-section surface sampled for analysis of major electrolyte concentrations, wood moisture content and density. Electrical resistivity tomography results show patterns with high resistivities occurring in the inner part of the cross-section, with much lower values towards the outside. The high-resistivity areas were generally smaller than the low-resistivity areas. A comparison between ERT and actual SW area measured after felling shows a slope of the linear regression close to unity (=0.96) with a large spread of values (R(2) = 0.56) mostly due to uncertainties in ERT. Electrolyte concentrations along sampled radial transects (cardinal directions) generally showed no trend from the centre of the tree to the bark. Wood moisture content and density show comparable trends that could explain the resistivity patterns. While this study indicates the potential for application of ERT for estimating SW area, it shows that there remains a need for refinement in locating the SW-HW boundary (e.g., by improvement of the inversion method, or perhaps electrode density) in order to increase the robustness of the method.

Mulching mode and planting density affect canopy interception loss of rainfall and water use efficiency of dryland maize on the Loess Plateau of China

High and efficient use of limited rainwater resources is of crucial importance for the crop production in arid and semi-arid areas. To investigate the effects of different soil and crop management practices (i.e., mulching mode treatments: flat cultivation with non-mulching, flat cultivation with straw mulching, plastic-covered ridge with bare furrow and plastic-covered ridge with straw-covered furrow; and planting density treatments: low planting density of 45,000 plants/hm2, medium planting density of 67,500 plants/hm2 and high planting density of 90,000 plants/hm2) on rainfall partitioning by dryland maize canopy, especially the resulted net rainfall input beneath the maize canopy, we measured the gross rainfall, throughfall and stemflow at different growth stages of dryland maize in 2015 and 2016 on the Loess Plateau of China. The canopy interception loss was estimated by the water balance method. Soil water storage, leaf area index, grain yield (as well as it components) and water use efficiency of dryland maize were measured or calculated. Results showed that the cumulative throughfall, cumulative stemflow and cumulative canopy interception loss during the whole growing season accounted for 42.3%–77.5%, 15.1%–36.3% and 7.4%–21.4% of the total gross rainfall under different treatments, respectively. Soil mulching could promote the growth and development of dryland maize and enhance the capability of stemflow production and canopy interception loss, thereby increasing the relative stemflow and relative canopy interception loss and reducing the relative throughfall. The relative stemflow and relative canopy interception loss generally increased with increasing planting density, while the relative throughfall decreased with increasing planting density. During the two experimental years, mulching mode had no significant influence on net rainfall due to the compensation between throughfall and stemflow, whereas planting density significantly affected net rainfall. The highest grain yield and water use efficiency of dryland maize were obtained under the combination of medium planting density of 67,500 plants/hm2 and mulching mode of plastic-covered ridge with straw-covered furrow. Soil mulching can reduce soil evaporation and retain more soil water for dryland maize without reducing the net rainfall input beneath the maize canopy, which may alleviate the contradiction between high soil water consumption and insufficient rainfall input of the soil. In conclusion, the application of medium planting density (67,500 plants/hm2) under plastic-covered ridge with bare furrow is recommended for increasing dryland maize production on the Loess Plateau of China.

Spatial Time Domain Reflectometry (spatial TDR) in geo-environmental engineering

Spatial Time Domain Reflectometry (spatial TDR) is a measurement method for determining water content profiles along electrically insulated probes (transmission lines). The method is based on the inverse modeling of TDR reflectograms using an optimisation algorithm. By means of using flat ribbon cables as sensors it is possible to take two independent TDR reflectograms from both ends of the probe, which are used to improve the spatial information content of the optimisation results and to consider effects caused by electrical conductivity. The method has been used for different geo-environmental purposes, such as the monitoring of water content distributions on a sand island for investigating groundwater recharge processes and the monitoring of a mine waste cover.