This study evaluated the effect of coarse or fine grinding of three forms of corn on the performance of lactating cows. Six diets, fed as total mixed rations, were identical except for the corn portion of the diet. Corn treatments were dry shelled corn, high moisture ensiled ear corn, and high moisture ensiled shelled corn, either coarsely or finely ground. The experimental design was a 6 x 6 L...

An experiment was performed in Northern Maine recently to evaluate the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data in the measurement of soil moisture content in small area plots with varying surface cover and at various subsurface depths. Ground preparation efforts involved defining six contiguous 30 m x 30 m plots with three surface cover conditions: bare tilled soil, short grass and forest. F...

An experiment was performed in Northern Maine recently to evaluate the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data in the measurement of soil moisture content in small area plots with varying surface cover and at various subsurface depths. Ground preparation efforts involved defining six contiguous 30 m x 30 m plots with three surface cover conditions: bare tilled soil, short grass and forest. F...

Density-independent high moisture content measurement is required in actual production line. In this paper, the experimental results for high moisture content measurement using microwave free-space technique are presented. The method is based on a ratio of phase shifts at two microwave frequencies after propagating through a sample. The experiments were performed with three kinds of sawdust nam...

Terrestrial biosphere models/land surface models are routinely used to study the effects of CO2 doubling and climate change. The objective of this study is to show that the biological response associated with CO2 doubling is important, and that the effects intrinsically depend on the soil moisture state. Therefore, using a coupled biosphere–atmosphere model, we tested the hypothesis that the bi...

[1] In part 1 of this study (Prigent et al., 2004), in situ measurements were used to analyze and describe the sensitivities of satellite measurements (i.e., active and passive microwave observations and surface skin temperature diurnal cycle amplitude) to the soil moisture variations to describe the complex relationships that exist between them. Soil moisture was considered in the first 10-cm ...

By using a coupled land surface-atmosphere model with initial conditions of varying resolution and ensembles of systematically changed soil moisture, convective-scale simulations of a typical frontal rainstorm in the Yangtze River Basin are collected to investigate: (1) effects of different datasets on the simulated frontal mesoscale convective systems (MCSs); (2) possible linkages between soil...

[1] The sensitivity of evapotranspiration (ET) to soil moisture storage plays an important role in the landatmosphere system. Yet little is known about its magnitude, or its dependence on vegetation, soil, and/or climate characteristics. Here we relate the sensitivity to the timescale of ET decay in absence of rainfall, and show that it can thus be derived from time series of ET alone. We analy...

This paper discusses the sensitivity of scatterometric and radiometric sensors to the surface characteristics of canopy-covered soils, and compares their performances in separating crops and in measuring soil moisture and vegetation biomass.