| The amount of methane that vent from landfills is dependent on the physical, chemical and biological components of the soil cover. Especially moisture content and temperature of the soil are known as the major controlling factors. Previous studies have attempted to correlate moisture content and temperature with methane emission by collecting soil samples from landfill soil covers and analyzing them in the laboratory for moisture content determination. However, the moisture content of the soil continuously changes within minutes to hours as a result of change in temperature. In-situ moisture content measurement is therefore, very critical to capture the continuous change of moisture content. The presented study used Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) to measure in-situ moisture content.; Moisture content, temperature and methane data of the landfill soil cover were collected and analyzed. Attributes of soil grain size such as D 10, D30, D60 and uniformity coefficient, C u, of the soil were analyzed and their influence on moisture content and methane emission was examined. Methane emission showed good temporal correlation with soil temperature, however, no significant relationship between moisture content and methane emission was observed.; The author used kriging and polynomial regression methods to characterize the spatial distribution of moisture content and methane emission. Spatial distribution of soil attributes was also analyzed to examine its effect on those variables. The spatial pattern of moisture content was quite similar to that of uniformity coefficient, Cu and that of clay content of the soil but strongly contrasted to that of methane emission. |
