Geophysical techniques for plant, soil, and root research related to sustainability

Abstract

The sustainable management of human activities, from production to waste disposal and the cycling of finite resources, is one of the great challenges of research for the coming decades, stemming from societal needs and the growing awareness of environmental mechanisms. Research on geophysical methods provides an interdisciplinary approach to such challenges by addressing the need for techniques to assist in designing and monitoring strategies for sustainability in agriculture and other environment-related sciences. In the past few decades, technological advances have produced new tools or have improved existing techniques for near-surface geophysical investigation in a robust, cost-effective, and noninvasive way. Experimental results have proved that soil physical properties thus detected and mapped can be used as a proxy of physical, chemical, and biological features relevant for the appropriate management of soils, based on their behavior, spatial variability, and time dynamics. This chapter reviews principles of the techniques and reports selected research results on environmental and agronomic research.