The impact of farming practices on soil hydrodynamics revealed by distributed acoustic sensing
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Qibin Shi
Rice University
- Date & Time
- Location
- Online-only seminar via Microsoft Teams
- Host
- Jimmy Atterholt
- Summary
The mechanical behavior of near-surface porous media is fundamentally governed by the interplay between structural disturbance and fluid saturation. However, capturing the high-resolution coupling between mechanical stiffness and moisture redistribution at the field scale remains a significant observational challenge. We present a framework that combines Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) with physics-based hydromechanical modeling to interpret how mechanical disturbance (tillage and compaction) histories control the transient response of shallow soil layers.
Using ambient noise interferometry, we tracked seismic velocity variations dv/v at meter-scale spatial and minute-scale temporal resolutions. Our results demonstrate that dynamic capillary effects govern transient soil stiffness and the evolution of effective stress following infiltration events. We observe that disturbed media exhibit rapid seismic velocity reductions during near-surface saturation, followed by large hysteretic velocity recoveries driven by evapotranspiration-induced suction. We will discuss how structural reorganization alters flux partitioning and hydraulic storage capacity. This work provides direct observational evidence of how mechanical disturbance fundamentally reorganizes the hydrodynamics of porous media. Furthermore, it establishes DAS as a scalable, non-invasive probe for constraining constitutive models of the shallow subsurface, with broad implications for Earth system models, land management, and geohazard resilience.