The 6th International Symposium on Soil Water Measurement Using Capacitance, Impedance and Time Domain Transmission (TDT)

 Organized by:

 PALTIN International Inc., in cooperation with the Center for Remote Sensing of the Biosphere (CESBIO), will be held at Toulouse, France,

 September 18 – 20, 2018.

 

 International Organizing Committee & Editorial Committee:

 Dr. Ioan Caton Paltineanu - President, PALTIN International Inc., West Laurel, Maryland, USA, ioan@ paltin.com

 Dr. Michael H. Cosh - Acting Research Leader / Research Hydrologist, USDA-ARS Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory, Beltsville, Maryland, USA, Michael.Cosh@ ars.usda.gov

 Dr. Jeffrey E. Campbell - Vice President, GroGuru Inc, 3870 W. Deerpath Dr., Boise, ID 83714, USA, campcons@ gmail.com

 Dr. Brian K. Hornbuckle - Department of Agronomy, 3007 Agronomy Hall, Iowa State University of Science and Technology Ames, IA 50011-1010, USA, bkh@iastate.edu

 Dr. Juan Vera Munoz - Scientist, Spanish Council Research, CEBAS - CSIC, Department of Irrigation, Campus Universitario Espinando, Murcia, Spain, jvera@ cebas.csic.es

 Dr. Miguel Quemada - Professor of Agronomy, School of Agricultural Engineering, Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, miguel.quemada@ upm.es

 Dr. Giuseppe Provenzano - Professor of Irrigation Plants, Department of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Italy, giuseppe.provenzano@ unipa.it

 Dr. Giovanni Rallo - Scientist, Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (DAFE), Università di Pisa - University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, giovanni.rallo@ unipi.it

 Dr. Mike Schwank - Swiss Federal Institute WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland, mike.schwank@ wsl.ch

 Dr. Christian Hauck – Professor, Alpine Cryosphere & Geomorphology, Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, christian.hauck@ unifr.ch

 Dr. Lutz Weihermüller - Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, 52425 Juelich, Germany, l.weihermueller@ fz-juelich.de

 Dr. Majken Caroline Looms Zibar - University of Copenhagen, Departement of Geosciences and Natural Resources Management, Denmark, mcl@ ign.ku.dk

 Dr. Yann H. Kerr - CESBIO, 18 Av. Edouard Belin, BPI 2801, 31401 Toulouse, France, yann.kerr@ cesbio.cnes.fr

 Dr. Arnaud Mialon - CESBIO, Toulouse, France, arnaud.mialon@ cesbio.cnes.fr

 Dr. Simone Bircher - CESBIO, Toulouse, France, simone.bircher@ cesbio.cnes.fr

 Dr. Aurore Brut - CESBIO, 18 Av. Edouard Belin, BPI 2801, 31401 Toulouse, France, aurore.brut@ cesbio.cnes.fr

 Dr. Ahmad Al Bitar - CESBIO, 18 Av. Edouard Belin, BPI 2801, 31401 Toulouse, France, ahmad.albitar@ cesbio.cnes.fr

 Dr. Ludovic Villard - CESBIO, 18 Av. Edouard Belin, BPI 2801, 31401 Toulouse, France, ludovic.villard@ cesbio.cnes.fr

 Dr. Mehrez Zibri - CESBIO, 18 Av. Edouard Belin, BPI 2801, 31401 Toulouse, France, mehrez.zribi@ ird.fr

 Dr. Eric Ceschia - CESBIO, 18 Av. Edouard Belin, BPI 2801, 31401 Toulouse, France, eric.ceschia@ cesbio.cnes.fr

 Dr. Vincent Bustillo - CESBIO, 18 Av. Edouard Belin, BPI 2801, 31401 Toulouse, France, vincent.bustillo@ iut-tlse3.fr

 Dr. Sébastien VERRIER - CESBIO/IUT Auch 24 rue d'Embaquès, 32000 Auch, France, sebastien.verrier@ iut-tlse3.fr

 

 

 Local Organizing Committee: TBA

 

SYMPOSIUM - 2018

 PALTIN International Inc., an independent research and technology transfer company dealing with real-time water monitoring systems for irrigation, drainage, hydrology and environmental impact studies, is organizing the “6th International Symposium on Soil Water Measurement using Capacitance, Impedance and TDT”, in cooperation with the Center for Remote Sensing of theBiosphere (CESBIO), at Toulouse, France, September 18 – 20, 2018.

 

The Center for Remote Sensing of the Biosphere (CESBIO), Toulouse, France, 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 modeling of the water balance and vegetation development. Modeling 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.”

 

Research, academia, independent consultants, current and future graduate students, manufacturers, provincial and national governments, and distributors are cordially invited to support and participate for the success of this symposium.

 

RATIONALE:

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).

Current international satellite remote sensing missions of soil moisture (ex.: The European Space Agency - SMOS; The NASA - SMAP, etc..) need real-time highly reliable in situ soil moisture, temperature and electrical conductivity data from near-surface soil layers in order to: calibrate the radiative transfer forward models used in the satellite retrieval algorithms; and to validate soil moisture retrieved from satellite observations.

At the same time, “ground truth” soil profile water content, temperature and salinity data are needed 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; cryology(in situ EM sensors to monitor soil freezing and thawing in mid to high latitudes as well as alpine environments) 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”.

 

We welcome increased public and independent research and technology efforts to standardize the laboratory calibration methods and techniques of dielectric constant based soil moisture sensors, along with manufacturers bench testing and authorized soil moisture sensors testing organizations, as well as individual efforts for detailed field calibration methods under different types of soils.

Specialized manufacturers should be ready to supply new robust, accurate real-time multi-parameter soil profile monitoring (1- 2m depth) probes to equip the current and future agro-meteorological stations. These multi parameter sensors could perform as independent probes, or could be an integral part of the international network for global evaluation of the “active root zone - plant community - atmosphere interface” related to water, energy and nutrient dynamics at global and regional scales, and using satellite telemetry and fast internet data accessibility.

Global increased demand for irrigation water and fertilizer consumption in the urban development (private homes, commercial landscapes, parks, and sport fields) determine the rapid pace of introduction of reliable, soil specific calibrated, soil moisture/temperature/EC sensors, to be connected to the current time-based irrigation controllers, in order to increase water and fertilizer application efficiencies, as well as reducing pollution of soil, and excess nutrients into underground and surface waters.

Extreme flooding events (by oceans, lakes and rivers) require technological solutions for real-time monitoring of water dynamics inside constructed dams, dikes, embankments as well as efficient alarm systems in order to prevent large losses of human and animal life, infrastructure and properties.

Robust, low power consumption, resistant under extreme environmental conditions(including snow, permafrost regions), future data acquisition and telemetry systems (radio, cellular, satellite) must perform flawlessly and at the same time to be capable of serving a multitude of sensors, and software packages. Frequent updating of software, as it is customarily - at the expense of customers, should be avoided.

 Independent consultants role for in site specific calibration of probes and their direct work with the end users (of any educational background and experience) for proper installation and use of capacitance, impedance and TDT probes and related data acquisition, telemetry, software packages, is still of utmost importance. Manufacturers should not consider the use of their technologies as part of the general marketing (over the counter) procedure.

 

 

SYMPOSIUM AGENDA:

  1. CONFERENCE: Oral presentations of Full Length Papers on the: STATE of the ART technology; APPLICATIONS – Case Studies; NEW DEVELOPMENTS - Future directions. Maximum 10 pages of the peer reviewed Full Length Papers will be published in the TRANSACTIONS of Symposium – 2018

  1. POSTER presentations on the: APPLICATIONS – Case Studies; NEW DEVELOPMENTS Maximum one page of the peer reviewed Abstracts will be published in the TRANSACTIONS of Symposium – 2018

  1. FORUM (oral) presentations on the: APPLICATIONS – Case Studies; NEW DEVELOPMENTS Maximum one page of the peer reviewed Abstracts will be published in the TRANSACTIONS of Symposium – 2018

  1. TECHNICAL EXHIBIT for manufacturers to introduce their newest sensors, probes, data acquisition, telemetry systems, and software packages;

  1. Field Water Management Hands-On Workshop Field demonstrations by International and French manufacturers of soil water/EC/temperature probes, acquisition and telemetry systems, software, etc.

 

 

 CONTACT:

 Correspondence related to the 6th International Symposium – 2018, should be addressed to Dr. Ioan Caton Paltineanu (ioan@ paltin.com), with copies to Dr. Simone Bircher (birchers@cesbio.cnes.fr), and Dr. Arnaud Mialon (arnaud.mialon@ cesbio.cnes.fr) on behalf of the local organizing committee.

 

 BROCHURE:

 A brochure containing details on the 6th International Symposium - 2018 will be available at PALTIN International Inc., and at the CESBIO websites.

 

 

CORPORATE SPONSORS:

 International, national and regional corporations and non-government institutions are cordially invited to sponsor the Transactions of the 6th International Symposium – 2018 contributing towards improving and preserving our planet’s global fresh water as well as our soil resources.

 

MAIN TOPICS FOR PAPERS, POSTERS AND DISCUSSIONS:

Presentations of original research, technical and synthesis papers (oral, multimedia and posters) regarding: State of Art technology; Applications case studies, and New developments and future directions; will cover the following topics:

 

I) STATE OF THE ART TECHNOLOGY

1.1. Theory: dielectric properties of porous media; effects of operating frequency sensors performance; relationship between water content, temperature, salinity and reading frequencies; permittivity vs. water content, etc.;

1.2. New developments: multi parameter sensors, ground wireless transmission of data, logging facilities, telemetry systems, software, etc.;

1.3. Calibration: Methodology (laboratory and field); Mineralogy; Shrinking and Swelling media; High organic content media; Saline conditions; Layered soils; Zone of influence (axial and radial); statistics for intrinsic soil characteristics etc.. New proposals for standardization of laboratory and field calibration methods and techniques of dielectric constant based soil water/EC/temperature sensors are welcome;

1.4. Development of new real-time soil water/temperature/EC profile dynamics monitoring data based computer models for large areas;

1.5. Spatial monitoring and remote monitoring:

      1.5.1. Soil water content (surface and profile) monitoring over large research/application areas (ground truth);

      1.5.2. Telemetry of data: Radio frequencies, cellular phones, aircraft, satellites;

 1.6. Global, continental, regional distribution of capacitance, impedance and TDT probes, monitoring and telemetry systems over large areas for research, practical applications and educational programs (High Schools, Colleges, Public at large);

1.7. Future directions: Global network for real-time soil water profile dynamics vs. remote sensing monitoring; etc.

 

 

 II) APPLICATIONS CASE STUDIES

 2.1. Research oriented studies over large areas using GPS and GIS data (climate change, drought, flood, agriculture, forestry, hydrology, and environmental impact studies). Integrated real-time monitoring studies of water quantity and quality from irrigation water source to soil water/EC/temperature profile, underground leaching, groundwater observation wells, run-off to surface water resources;

 2.2. Aircraft and orbital platforms remote sensing retrieved data versus "ground truth" real-time soil moisture/temperature/EC profile dynamics monitoring and telemetry systems data, using GPS and GIS data;

 2.3. Irrigation and drainage in agricultural settings such as field and vegetable crops, fruit trees, vineyards;

 2.4. Real-time soil moisture based irrigation controllers for private homes, sports fields (soccer, football, baseball, golf courses, etc.), public parks, and commercial landscape architectural projects;

2.5. Soil water balance related studies including short and long-term agricultural management practices evaluation, soil erosion, compaction, soil carbon accumulation, gas emission processes among others;

2.6. Land reclamation, rural development, civil engineering, construction (dams, dikes, embankments, highways, bridges, airports, concrete structures) and real-time monitoring, mining works;

2.7. Waste disposal sites for nuclear and non-nuclear materials;

2.8. Landslide monitoring and prediction studies;

2.9. Landmine location signature, environmental soil water, atmosphere characterization for better landmine (or improvised devices) detection and neutralization;

2.10. Future directions.

 

 

REGISTRATION and SUBMISSION of proposals for: oral presentations at Conference and Forum; Posters; Technical Exhibit booth; and Field Hands-On demonstrations.

1) Pre-registration (expression of interest/letter of intent): Participant’s name and complete address, Title of paper, Co-Authors names and addresses. Participation of companies with a booth at the Technical Exhibition, or just individual participation should be specified. (Pre-Registration Form available at www.paltin.com). Send email to Dr. Ioan Caton Paltineanu at ioan@paltin.com, before March 1, 2017

2) Abstract submission: Title, authors, filiations, addresses, and text in English, maximum one page 8.5” X 11”, MS Word, double spaced, 1” margin top/base, 1” margin left/right, use 12 point font Times New Roman type for Title, all other text use 10 point font Times New Roman type, indicating desired form of presentation (oral or poster). Send all Abstracts to Dr. Ioan C. Paltineanu at ioan@paltin.com before December 31, 2017.

 3) International Organizing and Editorial Committees response with approval of Abstracts to be presented as Oral or Poster presentation, before March 01, 2018. For all Abstracts accepted for oral Presentation to the Conference, it will be requested the submission of Full Length Papers proposals(maximum 10 pages/each) for peer review, approval, and publication in the Transactions of the 6th International Symposium - 2018.

 4) Send Full Length Papers proposals for peer review to Dr. Ioan C. Paltineanu at ioan@paltin.com, one month after approval of their Abstracts.

 No Abstract proposal for presentation at the Conference, Forum and Poster sessions will enter the peer review process without receiving the Full Registration fee payment for participation to the Symposium – 2018 (see the Full Registration Form and payment fees at www.paltin.com Symposium – 2018 for discounts).

 5) Full Registration fees can be paid online (secure-web, Stripe) at: PALTIN International Inc., website (www.paltin.com), or TBA later.

 6) Return of peer review observations of Full Length Paper and Abstracts of Posters and Forum presentations, to the senior authors (three months after receiving the proposal and the participation fee payment), but before April 30, 2018.

 7) Transactions of the 6th International Symposium – 2018: The Final draft of the Full Length papers, and Abstracts of posters and forum presentations ready for publication, will be sent back to Dr. Ioan Caton Paltineanu, at ioan@ paltin.com , before May 31, 2018.

 

PALTIN International Inc., the publisher, will retain an ISBN Number for the publication of “Transactions of the 6th International Symposium – 2018”. The ISBN Numbers for the previous Symposiums have been advertised on PALTIN International Inc. website (www.paltin.com at NEWS and PRODUCTS), and can be found at (books.google.com › Science › General) under ISBN Numbers as follows:

 Transactions of Symposium – 2014: ISBN 0982796935, 978-0-9827969-3-1

 Transactions of Symposium - 2010: ISBN 0982796927, 9780982796924

 Transactions of Symposium – 2007: ISBN 0982796919, 9780982796917

 Transactions of Symposium – 2002: ISBN 0982796900, 9780982796900

 

 8) Full Registered participants will receive at the opening of symposium a hard copy and a memory stick of the TRANSACTIONS of the 6th International Symposium - 2018, containing all peer reviewed Full-length papers as well as of the Abstracts of posters and forum presentations(a table with the names, positions, addresses, emails, of all participants by countries of origin will be included, too). Also, a signed “Certificate of Attendance”, will be given to each full registered participant.

 9) At the recommendation of the Organizing Committee, Sponsors are welcome to provide additional funds for editing and publishing a book on "Capacitance, Impedance and Time Domain Transmission probes for real-time soil water/EC/temperature/ profile monitoring: Theory and Practical Applications"

 

SPONSORS AND COLLABORATORS

National and international non-governmental societies, provincial and federal agencies, universities, private companies and foundations interested in promoting non-nuclear real-time soil water/EC/temperature measurement probes, monitoring and telemetry systems based on Capacitance, Impedance and Time Domain Transmission, are welcome to offer sponsorship and will be recognized in the Symposium's Transactions.

 

 

TRAVEL AND ACCOMODATIONS

Participants are required to make their own travel and hotel accommodations. Participants are responsible for ensuring they have the necessary travel documents to enter into France. More specific info will be advertised soon.

 

Symposium – 2018 AGENDA is subject to change without notice