This is an update to the special section “Remote Sensing for Vadose Zone Hydrology—A Synthesis from the Vantage Point” [Vadose Zone Journal 12(3)]. Satellites (e.g., Soil Moisture Active Passive [SMAP] and Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity [SMOS]) using passive microwave techniques, in particular at L-band frequency, have shown good promise for global mapping of near-surface (0–5-cm) soil moistu...

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Soil moisture satellite mission accuracy, repeat time and spatial resolution requirements are addressed through a numerical twin data assimilation study. Simulated soil moisture profile retrievals were made by assimilating near-surface soil moisture observations with various accuracy (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10%v/v standard deviation) repeat time (1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 days), and spatial r...

[1] This study presents a systematic and integrated analysis of the sensitivity of the available satellite observations to in situ soil moisture measurements. Although none of these satellites is optimized for land surface characterization, before the launches of the SMOSand HYDROS-dedicated missions they are the only potential sources of global soil moisture measurements. The satellite observa...

Soil moisture is an important environmental variable in regulating energy fluxes and water infiltration near the soil surface. This makes it a significant parameter in meteorological and climate modelling applications. While ground measurement of soil moisture at a large spatial scale is cumbersome and time-consuming, remote sensing offers the advantage of frequent observations in time and spac...

Land surface models (LSM) are widely used as scientific and operational tools to simulate mass and energy fluxes within the soil vegetation atmosphere continuum for numerous applications in meteorology, hydrology or for geobiochemistry studies. A reliable parameterization of these models is important to improve the simulation skills. 5 Soil moisture is a key variable, linking the water and ener...

Water balance considerations at the soil surface lead to an equation that relates the autocorrelation of soil moisture in climate models to 1) seasonality in the statistics of the atmospheric forcing, 2) the variation of evaporation with soil moisture, 3) the variation of runoff with soil moisture, and 4) correlation between the atmospheric forcing and antecedent soil moisture, as perhaps induc...

This paper presents an evaluation of AMSR (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer) soil moisture products, based on the comparison with three ground soil moisture networks. The selected ground sites are representative of various climatic, hydrologic and environmental conditions in temperate and semi-arid areas. They are located in the south-west of France, in the south-east of Australia and in ...

Infiltration rate of water into the soil depends on the factors such as rock and litter cover, canopy cover, rainfall intensity, coarse material, land slope, soil texture and amount of initial soil moisture. The most important factors that are effective in the water infiltration rate of rangelands are livestock trampling and vegetation reduction due to the overgrazing. In present study, through...

Soil moisture is an important factor for vegetation restoration and ecosystem sustainability in the Loess Plateau of China. The strong spatial heterogeneity of soil moisture is controlled by many environmental factors, including topography and land use. Moreover, the spatial patterns and soil hydrological processes depend on the scale of the site being investigated, which creates a challenge fo...