Agroseismology: unraveling the impact of farming practices on soil hydrodynamics
Qibin Shi, David R. Montgomery, Abigail L. S. Swann, Nicoleta C. Cristea, Ethan Williams, Nan You, Joe Collins, Ana Prada Barrio, Simon Jeffery, Paula A. Misiewicz, Tarje Nissen-Meyer, Marine A. Denolle
公開日: 2025/9/11
Abstract
Farmed landscapes provide a natural laboratory to test how management reshapes near-surface hydrodynamics. Combining distributed acoustic sensing with physics-based hydromechanical modeling, we tracked minute-resolution, meter-scale changes across experimental fields with controlled tillage and compaction histories. We find that dynamic capillary effects, rate-dependent suction stresses during wetting and drying, govern transient stiffness and moisture redistribution in disturbed soils, producing sharp post-rain velocity drops from near-surface saturation and large hysteretic velocity rebounds driven by evapotranspiration. By pairing a seismic rainfall proxy with a drainage closure, we invert velocity changes to estimate evapotranspiration, revealing how disturbance alters flux partitioning and storage. These results establish agroseismology as a non-invasive, extendable tool to uncover soil hydromechanics, explain why conventional farming intensifies variability, and provide new constraints for Earth system models, land management, and hazard resilience.