Obtaining Chemical Properties through Soil Electrical Resistivity

The electrical resistivity of soil is significantly influenced by shape of the particle of soil, presence of moisture in soil, chemical properties of soil and presence of organic materials in soil. Chemical properties of soil such as Soil pH, Cation exchange capacity (CEC), soil salinity can be efficiently determined by electrical resistivity of soil. The basic principal of obtaining chemical resistivity of soil through electrical resistivity is either to measure the current that flows between the probes which is inversely proportional to the resistance of the soil when a constant voltage is applied to one of the two probes placed in the soil or to directly measure the electrical resistivity using electromagnetic waves of different frequencies into soils. For this purpose methods of self- potential (SP), four electrode probe method, electrical profiling (EP), vertical electrical sounding (VES), and non-contact electromagnetic profiling (NEP) was used to measure the electrical properties of soil.