Announcing

the “6th International Symposium on Soil Water Measurement using Capacitance, Impedance and TDT”, Toulouse, France, September 18 - 20, 2018

The “6^th International Symposium on Soil Water Measurement using Capacitance, Impedance and TDT”, organized by PALTIN International in cooperation with the Center for Remote Sensing of the Biosphere (CESBIO), will be held at Toulouse, France, September 18 – 20, 2018.

Real-time monitoring of soil profile water content, temperature, and salinity is a very important technological and scientific issue. Feeding an increasing world population means adaptation to the challenges of a changing climate including an increase of extreme climate events (droughts, floods, etc.) regardless of their disputed origin (natural and/or anthropogenic), as well as developing new lands for sustainable crop production. Reliable soil water data is urgently needed as it currently constitutes one of the major uncertainties in climate and hydrological models, and thus, in water resource and crop management, weather/climate predictions and hazard analyses.

Electromagnetic (EM) sensors and probes, based on capacitance, impedance and time domain transmission, are the most commonly used sensors to monitor soil water, temperature and electrical conductivity due to their relatively low cost, accuracy, different design and geometry available, easy data logging, and more recently wireless data transmission capabilities (radio, cellular and satellite).

International satellite remote sensing missions of soil moisture and salinity (ex.: The European Space Agency - SMOS; The NASA - SMAP, etc..) need real-time highly reliable “ground truth” soil profile water content, temperature and salinity data in order to elaborate more accurate models for water balance and vegetation development as well as for land surface monitoring from local to global spatial scales.

As in our previous international meetings, it will be a great opportunity to share experiences and achievements between the diverse user’s community (academia, educators, farmers, consultants, etc..) and the main EM sensor manufacturing innovators from around the world. The main objectives of our symposium are: “The State-of-the Art”; “New Developments”; and “Application Cases” of EM sensors for measuring volumetric water content, temperature, and bulk electrical conductivity of soils in research and application studies such as: agriculture; hydrology; ecology; geophysics; and others. International participants will present their contributions, in English , to the: “Conference”; “Poster and Forum sessions”; “Technical Exhibit”, and to the “Field Water Management Hands-On Workshop”.

For questions related to the 6^th International Symposium – 2018, please write to Dr. Ioan Caton Paltineanu (ioan@paltin.com) with copies to the co-organizers:  Dr. Simone Bircher (simonebircher@gmail.com); and Dr. Arnaud Mialon (arnaud.mialon@cesbio.cnes.fr) on behalf of the local organizing committee.

About the Center for Remote Sensing of the Biosphere (CESBIO):

“CESBIO is a joint laboratory of the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Université Paul Sabatier (UPS), and the Institute de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD). There are over 60 permanent and roughly 60 non permanent employees (contractors, post docs, trainees, graduate and post graduate students) distributed over two permanent sites (Toulouse and Auch) and temporary sites in Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon and India.

The main research activities of CESBIO centre around the observation and modelling of the water balance and vegetation development.  Modelling approaches include hydrology, radiative transfer and vegetation growth models operating at 1 to 3 dimensions. The land surface monitoring is carried out from local to global spatial scales, in the scope of regional observatories in South Western France and Morocco delivering web map services, and by satellite acquisitions using optical/infra-red as well as active and passive microwave techniques. CESBIO is in charge of key operational steps of various French and European space missions (e.g. SMOS, Venus, Biomass, Thirsty), as well as the definition of future satellite projects.

The CESBIO branch in Toulouse is located south of the city centre, close to the Paul Sabatier University campus and CNES, providing free parking as well as public transport access by bus and metro. The building holds a conference room for a maximum 90 people.”

Updates on the organization of our Symposium – 2018, Toulouse, France, will be advertised on the websites of both PALTIN International (www.paltin.com) and CESBIO.

We look forward in welcoming you at Toulouse, France, September – 2018!

The 6^th International Symposium – 2018 is organized by:

Voice and Fax:  (301) 725 0604
Email: ioan@paltin.com
Website: www.paltin.com