Soil water content can be determined using many methods, including direct sampling, neutron scattering and a host of methods that rely on electronic measurement systems that respond to changes in the soil's dielectric permittivity at different scales. All methods suffer from some problems, which affect their utility for accurate calculations of the soil water balance and relevant inferences about rates of evapotranspiration, water use efficiency, recharge to groundwater and fluxes of dissolved substances and microfauna among other interests. This session will focus on methods of soil water determination. Relevant presentations would include, but not be limited to, those describing new sensor systems, calibrations for particular soils or conditions, comparisons and evaluations of sensors, relationship of measurement method to scale of the problem, discriminating between real spatial and temporal soil water content patterns and those appearing due to systematic measurement errors, accuracy of soil water balance, and theoretical and practical solutions to sensor application problems.