Forest Soil Water Research

[Bruce Metelerkamp]

Request for information on soil water monitoring research/researchers/
equipment.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PASS THIS ON TO SOMEONE YOU THINK MAY BE OF HELP

I am on the search for other researchers who have delved into soil water 
monitoring in the past or are doing it now. I am in communication with a few 
others at the moment, and so could be of help to you if you contact me 
directly or by reply here.

I am starting a research project to relate tree growth to soil water 
potential. Not an easy bite on which to chew!

I am proposing to use inexpensive probes at several levels installed permanently in
the soil. These I need to read both manually with some kind of meter, and 
logged continuously if a datalogger of sufficient durability and low enough 
cost per site can be found.
I am therefore looking for a source of new (or used) "Bouyoucas" type 
meters. These are AC-excitation bridge resistance meters. Anything supplied 
commercially for use with the soil sensors is almost as expensive as a 
datalogger unit! The only others I've seen have a needle read-out, and I 
would prefer digital for the field worker to read-off.

The dataloggers are more easily sourced - being commercially more desireable.