In the Sudano-Sahelian areas of Africa droughts can have serious impacts on natural resources, and therefore land surface moisture is an important factor. Insufficient conventional sites for monitoring land surface moisture make the use of Earth Observation data for this purpose a key issue. In this study we explored the potential of using reflectance data in the Red, Near Infrared (NIR), and S...

Despite rapid advances in the field of metal-free, "frustrated Lewis pair" (FLP)-catalyzed hydrogenation, the need for strictly anhydrous reaction conditions has hampered wide-scale uptake of this methodology. Herein, we report that, despite the generally perceived moisture sensitivity of FLPs, 1,4-dioxane solutions of B(C6F5)3 actually show appreciable moisture tolerance and can catalyze hydro...

Since iodine readily sublimes at ambient temperature, the effectiveness of salt iodization programs depends on the stability of the iodine carrier, typically potassium iodate. We examined the stability of iodine in typical salts available in 12 countries in a controlled laboratory setting, at high temperature (40°C) and controlled humidity (60 or 100%) for periods up to 12 months. Iodine was ra...

soil moisture retention curve (smrc) is an important soil property which expresses reaction between matric potential and moisture of soil. direct measurement of soil matric potential and moisture is labour- and time-consuming. in order to prevail this problem, indirect methods are used for smrc prediction. pedotransfer functions (ptfs) are one of these indirect methods. this study was carried o...

The upcoming Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission of the European Space Agency will be the first satellite dedicated to the measurement of soil moisture. It will measure soil moisture for the top 5 cm at a spatial resolution of 35 to 50 km. Comparison of the soil moisture data from SMOS with insitu monitoring network measurements across areas the size of a SMOS footprint will play a ...

Many satellite soil moisture products are today globally available in near real-time. These observations are of paramount importance for enhancing the understanding of the hydrological cycle and particularly useful for flood forecasting purposes. In recent decades, several studies assimilated satellite soil moisture observations into rainfall-runoff models to improve their flood forecasting ski...

BACKGROUND Respiratory health effects of damp housing are well recognised, but less is known about the effect of dampness and water damage in schools. The HITEA study previously reported a higher prevalence of respiratory symptoms in pupils from moisture damaged schools, but the role of specific microbial exposures remained unclear. OBJECTIVES To study associations between school dampness, le...

This paper presents a microwave/optical synergistic methodology to retrieve soil moisture in an alpine prairie. The methodology adequately represents the scattering behavior of the vegetation-covered area by defining the scattering of the vegetation and the soil below. The Integral Equation Method (IEM) was employed to determine the backscattering of the underlying soil. The modified Water Clou...

Starch, supplied in Midwest diets primarily from high-moisture and dry corn grain and whole-plant corn silage, is an important source of energy for dairy cattle. However, the digestibility of corn starch can be highly variable. Various factors, particle size (fine vs. coarse grind), grain processing (steam flaked vs. dry rolled), storage method (dry vs. high-moisture corn), moisture content of ...

The lack of continuous soil moisture fields at large spatial scales, based on observations, has hampered hydrologists from understanding its role in weather and climate. The most readily available observations from which a surface wetness state could be derived is the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) observations at 10.65 GHz. This paper describes the first atte...