A field lysimeter (from Greek λύσις (loosening) and the suffix -meter) is a cylindrical container filled with soil, which can be used to study the transport of water and material through the soil. This type of lysimeter can be equipped with different measuring probes at different depths (e.g., soil temperature, tensiometer for measuring water tension). The soil contained in the field lysimeter can either be collected as a monolith (i.e., in one piece) or be reconstructed from the different layers present at the sampling site. Most lysimeters contain an opening at the bottom allowing the leachate to be collected and analyzed over time.
Lysimeters can be used to measure the amount of actual evapotranspiration which is released by plants (usually crops or trees). By recording the amount of precipitation that an area receives and the amount lost through the soil, the amount of water lost to evapotranspiration can be calculated. [1] There are multiple types of lysimeters, with each designed for specific purposes; the choice of lysimeter depends on project objectives, parameters to be measured, and the environmental conditions under investigation. Some types of lysimeters include:
The list above is not comprehensive; there are many types of lysimeters and many ways that lysimetry can be used to understand soil-porewater relationships.
In the rest of this article, "lysimeter" refers to a field lysimeter for understanding interaction between soil-plant interactions.
A lysimeter is most accurate when vegetation is grown in a large soil tank which allows the rainfall input and water lost through the soil to be easily calculated. The amount of water lost by evapotranspiration can be worked out by calculating the difference between the weight before and after the precipitation input.
For farm crops, a lysimeter can represent field conditions well since the device is installed and used outside the laboratory. A weighing lysimeter, for example, reveals the amount of water crops use by constantly weighing a huge block of soil in a field to detect losses of soil moisture (as well as any gains from precipitation).[2] An example of their use is in the development of new xerophytic apple tree cultivars in order to adapt to changing climate patterns of reduced rainfall in traditional apple growing regions.[3]
The University of Arizona's Biosphere 2 built the world's largest weighing lysimeters using a mixture of thirty 220,000 and 333,000 lb-capacity (ca. 100,000 and 150,000 kg) column load cells from Honeywell, Inc. as part of its Landscape Evolution Observatory project.[4]
To date, physiology-based, high-throughput phenotyping systems (also known as plant functional phenotyping systems), which, used in combination with soil–plant–atmosphere continuum (SPAC) measurements and fitting models of plant responses to continuous and fluctuating environmental conditions, should be further investigated in order to serve as a phenotyping tool to better understand and characterize plant stress response.[5] In these systems (known also as gravimetric system), plants are placed on weighing lysimeters that measure changes in pot weight at a high frequency. This data is then combined with measurements of environmental parameters in the greenhouse, including radiation, humidity and temperature, as well as soil water conditions. Using pre-measured data including soil weight and initial plant weight, a great deal of phenotypic data can be extracted including data on stomatal conductance, growth rates, transpiration and soil water content and plant dynamic behaviour such as the critical ɵ point, which is the soil water content at which plants start to respond to stress by reducing their stomatal conductance.[6]
The Faculty of Agriculture in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem owns one of the most advanced functional phenotyping system, with more than 500 units screened simultaneously.[7]
Lysimeters can also be used to study degradation patterns of substances in specific types of soils. For example, lysimeters can be filled with material from railways. For instance, in Wädenswil, Switzerland, 10 lysimeters are used to study the degradation of herbicides in the soil of railway tracks. By filling the lysimeters with material from different railway tracks, researchers are able to create conditions that mimic the conditions found in these specific environments.[8]
In 1875 Edward Lewis Sturtevant, a botanist from Massachusetts, built the first lysimeter in the United States.[9]