The description of soil moisture dynamics is a challenging problem for the hydrological community, as it is governed by complex interactions between climate, soil and vegetation. Recent research has achieved significant advances in the description of temporal dynamics of soil water balance through the use of a stochastic differential equation proposed by Laio et al. (2001). The assumptions of t...

Soil moisture is the key variable in the hydrological cycle. In the Volta Basin, West Africa, where rainfed agriculture forms the main source of income for the majority of the population; productivity relies on available soil moisture or “green water”. Progress will depend on good management of green water, and will be strongly based on monitoring results. Data scarcity in the Volta Basin empha...

Peanut, an important oilseed crop, is gaining priority for the development of drought tolerant genotypes in recent times, since the area under drought is constantly on the rise. To achieve this, one of the important strategies is to genetically engineer the ruling peanut varieties using transcription factor regulating the expression of several downstream, abiotic-stress responsive gene(s). In t...

This thesis focuses on two main areas: methods for assessing regional supply potentials of reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea L.) (RCG); and process technology for the production of high-quality RCG pellets. Partial equilibrium modelling, incorporating a break-even price approach, was used to examine supply potentials for RCG in Västerbotten County, northern Sweden. A remote sensing method...

As global temperatures rise, variation in annual climate is also changing, with unknown consequences for forest biomes. Growing forests have the ability to capture atmospheric CO2 and thereby slow rising CO2 concentrations. Forests' ongoing ability to sequester C depends on how tree communities respond to changes in climate variation. Much of what we know about tree and forest response to clima...

Soil moisture supply and atmospheric demand for water independently limit—and profoundly a ect—vegetation productivity and water use during periods of hydrologic stress1–4. Disentangling the impact of these two drivers on ecosystem carbon and water cycling is di cult because they are often correlated, and experimental tools for manipulating atmospheric demand in the field are lacking. Consequen...

The thermo-mechanical testing of HYSOL FP4549 polymer-filled underfill materials was conducted under different strain rate and temperature environment. A new specimen preparation procedure and further test methodology are developed to characterize the time–temperature mechanical behaviors of underfill materials. The stress–strain behavior of materials is simulated with constitutive framework, a...