Technical approach for the measurement of surface runoff

In this paper we describe practical application, design and installation of an in-field runoff collector exploitable for monitoring nutrients, pesticides and sediments loadings in runoff, improved with a home made level reading system able to measure with high temporal resolution, the runoff rate variation. This configuration simplifies and lower the cost of conventional instruments used for measuring runoff. A multislot divisor was used to reduce the volume of runoff and plastic tank were use to collect it. An electro-mechanic type, floating level transducer was proposed. The homemade level reading system is composed of three parts: floating level transducer, signal conditioning system and data storage. The total cost for entire system is approximately € 642.