Measuring soil water potential to create a moisture release curve has always been tricky. Even if you’re an expert at traditional methods, these measurements require a tremendous amount of work. Plus, you still face limitations—like a lack of data points—that affect the final result. Some methods take several months just to complete a partial curve. And if that was water potential for an entire curve. Until the HYPROP 2.

As soil scientists who have made hundreds of moisture release curves, we wanted an instrument that delivered greater accuracy. And we demanded an instrument that was automated. The HYPROP 2 takes only days vs. months to generate a soil water characteristic curve in the wet range, and it does this automatically. Use it together with the WP4C (which measures the dry range), and you can create full, high-resolution moisture release curves.

On top of all that, we designed the HYPROP 2 to determine unsaturated hydraulic conductivity on undisturbed soil samples placed inside a standard 250 mL sampling ring. Used in tandem with the KSAT, it can measure the full unsaturated hydraulic conductivity curve. The resulting instrument winds up saving you time, hassle and worry.

When it comes to soil water potential, measurements don’t get any more accurate or detailed. That’s because the HYPROP 2 produces more data points (over 100 data points in the 0 to -100 kPa range), higher resolution data, more detail, and better information in its moisture release curves—information that is missed when using the traditional pressure plates or hanging water column methods.

The HYPROP 2 uses two precision mini-tensiometers to measure water potential at different levels within a saturated soil sample while the sample rests on a laboratory balance. Over time, the sample dries, and the instrument measures the changing water potential and the changing sample weight simultaneously. It calculates the moisture content from the weight measurements and plots changes in water potential correlated to changes in moisture content.

The HYPROP 2 is a complex instrument, but it makes moisture release curves much simpler. While other methods require weeks of tedious drying and weighing, the HYPROP 2 can be set up to run automatically. Its software calculates values for dry range and saturation according to a selected model, and it even allows you to input data from other water potential instruments such as the WP4C to automatically fit the soil moisture release curves.

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