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Mass and energy exchanges between soil, plants and atmosphere control anumber of key environmental processes involving hydrology, biota andclimate. The understanding of these exchanges also play a critical role forpractical purposes e.g. in precision agriculture. In this paper we present amethodology based on coupling innovative data collection and models in orderto obtain quantitative estimates of the key parameters of such complex flowsystem. In particular we propose the use of hydro-geophysical monitoring via"time-lapse" electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) in conjunction withmeasurements of plant transpiration via sap flow and evapotranspiration (ET) fromeddy covariance (EC). This abundance of data is fed to spatially distributedsoil models in order to characterize the distribution of active roots. Weconducted experiments in an orange orchard in eastern Sicily (Italy),characterized by the typical Mediterranean semi-arid climate. The subsoildynamics, particularly influenced by irrigation and root uptake, werecharacterized mainly by the ERT set-up, consisting of 48 buried electrodes on4 instrumented micro-boreholes (about 1.2 m deep) placed at the corners of asquare (with about 1.3 m long sides) surrounding the orange tree, plus 24mini-electrodes on the surface spaced 0.1 m on a square grid. During themonitoring, we collected repeated ERT and time domain reflectometry (TDR) soil moisture measurements,soil water sampling, sap flow measurements from the orange tree and EC data.We conducted a laboratory calibration of the soil electrical properties as afunction of moisture content and porewater electrical conductivity.Irrigation, precipitation, sap flow and ET data are available allowing forknowledge of the system's long-term forcing conditions on the system. Thisinformation was used to calibrate a 1-D Richards' equation model representingthe dynamics of the volume monitored via 3-D ERT. Information on the soilhydraulic properties was collected from laboratory and field experiments.The successful results of the calibrated modelling exercise allow for thequantification of the soil volume interested by root water uptake (RWU). Thisvolume is much smaller (with a surface area less than 2 m<sup>2</sup>, andabout 40 cm thick) than expected and assumed in the design of classicaldrip irrigation schemes that prove to be losing at least half of theirrigated water which is not taken up by the plants

hydrology and earth system sciences

Monitoring and modelling of soil–plant interactions: the joint use of ERT, sap flow and eddy covariance data to characterize the volume of an orange tree root zone