Water content or moisture content is the quantity of water contained in a material, such as soil (called soil moisture), rock, ceramics, or wood. The property is used in a wide range of scientific and technical areas, and is expressed as a ratio, which can range from 0 (completely dry) to the value of the materials' porosity at saturation.
where Vw is the volume of water and Vb is the bulk material volume. Water content may also be based on its mass, thus the gravimetric water content is defined as: