A number of approaches have been explored for measuring the water content of soil electrically. In contrast with traditional measurements, which utilize electric currents at DC or at specific frequencies, techniques in the report are based on the transmission and reflection of sharp, regularly repeated pulses. Such pulse measurements are equivalent to measuring the electrical properties at all frequencies in a very wide band, and therefore the possibility of extracting the desired information is much greater than with single-frequency measurements. Because the information content of the signal is great, data processing can be used to extract those features which relate most directly to moisture content and reject those which appear to depend more on soil inhomogeneities. The measurements were made and processed under real-time computer control. They include the signal scattered from known buried targets, transmission measurements through the ground, and the measurement of reflections in a coaxial test cell, all with pulses containing very wide frequency bands. The results are encouraging in that definite correlations with moisture were found. (Author)