In temperate European climates, the season of peak water demand by vegetation (summer) is out of phase with the season of greatest rainfall (winter). This results in seasonal fluctuations in soil water content and, in clay soils, associated problems of shrinking and swelling that can in turn contribute to strain-softening and progressive slope failure. This paper presents field measurements of ...

A 45 m section of a railway embankment located at Fort Saskatchewan County in Alberta, Canada, was remediated as part the Canadian Pacific Railway’s (CP) Grade Stabilization/Remediation Plan. The materials were replaced while 4.6 wide reinforcing geotextile (Mirafi® RS580i) and 7.3 wicking H2Ri) installed ballast sub-ballast interface between subgrade sub-ballast, respectively, aiming to addres...

This research investigates the interannual variability of soil moisture as related to large-scale climate variability and also evaluates the spatial and temporal variability of modeled deep layer (40–140 cm) soil moisture in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB). A three layers hydrological model VIC-3L (Variable Infiltration Capacity Model – 3 layers) was used to generate soil moisture in the ...

Passive microwave sensors have many advantages including the ability to directly measured soil moisture at large spatial scales regardless of weather conditions or time of day. However, microwave-sensed soil moisture’s inevitable limitation is that it cannot describe hydrology at the watershed because its retrieved soil moisture scale is too large. Thus, microwave-sensed soil moisture requires ...

This paper presents an approach denominated Group Inversion Approach (GIA) which aims at detecting soil moisture temporal invariants, i.e., the stable temporal soil moisture locations, by using mainly remotely sensed data. The soil moisture temporal invariants are those locations where independently of the absolute value changes, the relative spatial distribution of soil moisture remains almost...

While it is well known that soil moisture directly affects microbial activity and soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition, it is unclear if the presence of plants alters these effects through rhizosphere processes. We studied soil moisture effects on SOM decomposition with and without sunflower and soybean. Plants were grown in two different soil types with soil moisture contents of 45% and 85%...

In this paper, a soil moisture estimation model was developed to calculate the nationwide soil moisture fields using on site soil moisture observation, precipitation, surface temperature, MODIS NDVI and a data mining technique, Classification And Regression Tree (CART) algorithm and neural networks. The model was applied to the Yong-dam dam basin since the soil moisture observations of the Yong...

Soil moisture is a key variable in dryland ecosystems since it determines the occurrence and duration of vegetation water stress and affects the development of weather patterns including rainfall. However, the lack of ground observations of soil moisture and rainfall dynamics in many drylands has long been a major obstacle in understanding ecohydrological processes in these ecosystems. It is al...

Soil moisture products acquired from passive satellite missions have been widely applied in environmental processes. A primary challenge for the use of soil moisture products from passive sensors is their reliability. It is crucial to evaluate the reliability of those products before they can be routinely used at a global scale. In this paper, we evaluated the Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP...

Reliable estimation of hydrological soil moisture state is of critical importance in operational hydrology to improve the flood prediction and hydrological cycle description. Although there have been a number of soil moisture products, they cannot be directly used in hydrological modelling. This paper attempts for the first time to build a soil moisture product directly applicable to hydrology ...