Satellite remote sensing observations have the potential for efficient and reliable mapping of spatial soil moisture distributions. However, soil moisture retrievals from microwave remote sensing techniques are typically complex due to inherent difficulty in characterizing the interactions among land surface parameters that contribute to the retrieval process. Therefore, adequate physical mathe...

The extensive boreal biome is little studied relative to its global importance. Its high soil moisture and low temperatures result in large below-ground reservoirs of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N). Presently, such high-latitude ecosystems are undergoing the largest temperature increases in global warming. Change in soil temperature or moisture in the large pools of soil organic matter could funda...

Three independent surface soil moisture datasets for the period 1979–87 are compared: 1) global retrievals from the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), 2) global soil moisture derived from observed meteorological forcing using the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model, and 3) ground-based measurements in Eurasia and North America from the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank. Time-average ...

[1] Climate model prediction skill is currently limited in response to poor land surface soil moisture state initialization. However, initial soil moisture state prediction skill can potentially be enhanced by the assimilation of remotely sensed near-surface soil moisture data in off-line simulation. This study is one of the first to evaluate such potential using actual remote sensing data toge...

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is an efficient method for soil moisture mapping at the field scale, bridging the scale gap between small-scale invasive sensors and large-scale remote sensing instruments. Nevertheless, commonly-used GPR approaches for soil moisture characterization suffer from several limitations and the determination of the uncertainties in GPR soil moisture sensing has been po...

[1] The contrast between the point-scale nature of current ground-based soil moisture instrumentation and the ground resolution (typically >10 km) of satellites used to retrieve soil moisture poses a significant challenge for the validation of data products from current and upcoming soil moisture satellite missions. Given typical levels of observed spatial variability in soil moisture fields, t...

Precipitation and temperature are important drivers of soil respiration. The role of moisture and temperature are generally explored at seasonal or inter-annual timescales; however, significant variability also occurs on hourly to daily time-scales. We used small (1.54 m(2)), throughfall exclusion shelters to evaluate the role soil moisture and temperature as temporal controls on soil CO2 efflu...

With the aim of the improvement water retention in dry land condition by green manure application, this study was carried out with or without rye green manure along with 4 nitrogen fertilization rate in green manure-wheat rotation system between 2001 – 2007 years. Results showed that the green manure application effects were significant on the soil aggregate stability, soil bulk density and ava...

Surface soil moisture is an important environment variable that is dominant in a variety of research and application areas. Acquiring spatiotemporal continuous soil moisture observations is therefore of great importance. Weather conditions can contaminate optical remote sensing observations on soil moisture, and the absence of remote sensors causes gaps in regional soil moisture observation tim...