The relationship between soil water potential and the characterization of Soil Water Retention (SWR) and Unsaturated Hydraulic Conductivity (UHC) is pivotal in understanding unsaturated soil hydraulic properties. The evaporation method is a widely employed experimental technique for determining SWR and UHC functions. Unlike alternative methods such as the pressure plate method, the evaporation method stands out for its ease of use and cost-effectiveness. In this study, we introduce experimental enhancements to augment the conventional evaporation experimental setup. We have integrated a commercially available miniature tensiometer and a small capacitance soil moisture probe into the conventional experimental system. By incorporating the soil moisture probe into the conventional setup, we have eliminated the need for a balance, typically employed in conventional evaporation experiments to monitor sample weights. This innovation facilitates the direct estimation of hydraulic properties of natural soils under field conditions. The data obtained from our experiments have been subjected to two distinct data analysis procedures: i) analytical fitting utilizing the Schindler-EV method and ii) numerical fitting employing the HYDRUS-1D model.
