A novel laboratory method for the retrieval of the soil water retention curve from shortwave infrared reflectance

•A new laboratory method for estimating soil water retention is introduced.•The method only requires soil water content-dependent SWIR reflectance data.•Validation for 21 vastly different soils indicates a good performance. The soil water retention curve (SWRC) is an essential soil property that relates soil water content and matric potential. It plays a crucial role in soil water dynamics and the understanding of various hydrological phenomena at the land surface, including infiltration, runoff, evaporation, and energy exchange processes. In recent years, proximal sensing methods have shown great potential for retrieving this challenging-to-measure property from spectral reflectance. However, a physically-based approach is still lacking as current methods rely on empirical data-driven algorithms. Here we propose a novel physics-based laboratory method that, for the first time, enables direct estimation of the entire SWRC from saturated to dry using soil water content/reflectance data pairs within the shortwave infrared domain. The main hypothesis underlying the new method is that soil optical properties not only vary with soil water content but also with the pore scale distribution of capillary and adsorbed soil water. For evaluation, retrieved soil water retention curves of 21 soils that vastly differ in physical and hydraulic properties were compared to direct measurements. The results suggest that the new method is a rapid and efficient alternative to established laboratory measurement methods.