Fiber-optic "stethoscope" diagnoses fluctuations in soil moisture in farmland.

Soil is the "skin" of the Earth, as well as the cornerstone of global agriculture and ecology. On March 20, an international research team led by Shi Qibin, associate researcher at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published their findings in the international journal Science. This study used distributed optical fiber sensing technology to capture for the first time the structural fluctuations of agricultural soil at a minute scale, and through an original soil structure model, revealed the impact of farming practices on soil moisture changes.