A software tool to visualize soil moisture dynamics of an irregular-shaped profile

Software for two dimensional visualization of values that have been automatically measured with in place sensors is difficult to find. Usually these programs assume a regular area and a regular grid of measuring points. In practice, however, both the shape of the area and the position of the sensors are often irregular. This paper describes the program TDRFree, which visualizes the soil moisture content that has been automatically measured with a set of measuring devices distributed over an irregular 2-dimensional soil profile. The output consists of a series of contour-plots which can be easily combined and presented as an animation. It is also possible to generate values for a derived property such as soil water repellency, which depends on moisture content. The program can be applied to any data set that is measured in a 2-dimensional grid. •User-friendly program to process (automatically) measured data.•Reads data from Excel files.•Creates 2-dimensional charts.•Easy to convert into movie(WMV)-files.•Suitable for research and education.