ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Citizen Science
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1590662
Development of Low-Cost Handheld Soil Moisture Sensor for Farmers and Citizen Scientists
Provisionally accepted
- 1Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States
- 2NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States
- 3United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Washington, District of Columbia, United States
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In recent years, the emergence of sensor technologies has highlighted the key role of insitu soil moisture measurement in various hydrological, agricultural, and ecological applications. However, the widespread adoption of technology is hindered by the costs and accessibility of existing sensor devices. This study aims to bridge a significant research gap by designing an economical and user-friendly handheld device, a Low-Cost Soil Moisture (LCSM) sensor ensuring reliable in-situ measurements. This study has two main objectives: developing the LCSM sensor and establishing robust calibrations to ensure accuracy.Calibration experiments were conducted to develop generalized and soil-specific calibrations for the LCSM sensor across various field sites, encompassing diverse soil types (mineral-rich soil moisture readings with commercially available handheld soil moisture sensors (HydraProbe and ThetaProbe) demonstrated a strong agreement, with a high correlation (R > 0.90) and minimal difference in soil moisture measurements. These statistical findings highlight that the LCSM sensor measures soil moisture as accurately as commercially available sensors, strengthening its credibility and reliability for diverse conditions.
Keywords: citizen science, Handheld device, Low-cost sensor, soil moisture, Sensor calibration
Received: 10 Mar 2025; Accepted: 08 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mane, Das, Singh, Kanungo, Nagpal, Cosh and Dong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Narendra N. Das, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 48824, Michigan, United States
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