Soil moisture is a key variable for the water and energy exchanges at the land surface. The determination of soil moisture dynamics from space is one of the most prominent, but also most challenging applications for recent active microwave sensor systems. Since the launch of ENVISAT ASAR, more than 4 years of data is available for the retrieval of soil moisture information. The wide area covera...

Monitoring soil moisture dynamics from local to global scales is essential for a wide range of applications. The field of remote sensing of soil moisture has expanded greatly and the first dedicated soil moisture satellite missions (SMOS, SMAP) were launched, and new missions, such as SENTINEL-1 provide long-term perspectives for land surface monitoring. This special issue aims to summarize the...

The COsmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System (COSMOS) rover may be useful for validating satellite-based estimates of near-surface soil moisture, but the accuracy with which the rover can measure 0to 5-cm soil moisture has not been previously determined. Our objectives were to calibrate and validate a COSMOS rover for mapping 0to 5-cm soil moisture at spatial scales suitable for evaluating sat...

Moisture content of grain is one of the important parameters always considered when deciding the quality and price of grain, at the stage of harvesting, storage, processing and marketing. Grain having excess moisture content, if stored for long duration, will spoil due to insect/fungus infestation. Portable, field usable, and easy-to-use direct moisture (%) display Grain Moisture Meter is a nec...

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 ...

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

This investigation was conducted to evaluate the influence of waste placement practices on the engineering response of municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills. Waste placement conditions were varied by moisture addition to the wastes at the time of disposal. Tests were conducted at a California landfill in test plots (residential component of incoming wastes) and full-scale active face (all incom...

Soil moisture governs the surface fluxes of mass and energy and is a major influence on floods and drought. Existing techniques measure soil moisture either at a point or over a large area many kilometers across. To bridge these two scales we used the cosmic-ray rover, an instrument similar to the recently developed COSMOS probe, but bigger and mobile. This paper explores the challenges and opp...

Thin-layer moisture adsorption tests were conducted by exposing com kernels to different air relative humidities (RH of 75, 80, and 90%) and temperatures (25, 30, 35, and 40°C). A two-dimensional finite element model was developed to simulate moisture diffusion into a com kernel during adsorption. The finite element model satisfactorily predicted experimental moisture ratio of corn samples and ...

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...