Penetrometer for Soil and Snowpack Characterization

Abstract

Soils form an essential element in the ecosystem. It is important to know how well the soil will perform as a filter of wastes, as a home to organisms, as a location for buildings etc. An important tool used to characterize soil, is penetrometer. Variants of penetrometer are also used for studying snowpack parameters like hardness, temperature, density etc. These parameters are used to determine the stability of the snowpack in relation to its avalanche potential. The paper discusses design of a low cost, versatile PIC (Programmable Intelligent Computer) based, battery operated, portable, and programmable penetrometer developed by the authors.