This paper investigates a simplified polarimetric decomposition for soil moisture retrieval over agricultural fields. In order to overcome the coherent superposition of the backscattering contributions from vegetation and underlying soils, a simplification of an existing polarimetric decomposition is proposed in this study. It aims to retrieve the soil moisture by using only the surface scatter...

BACKGROUND Changes in the timing of phenological events may cause the annual carbon budget of deciduous forests to change. Therefore, one should take such events into account when evaluating the effects of global warming on deciduous forests. In this article, we report on the results of numerical experiments done with a model that includes a phenological module simulating the timing of bud burs...

Spartina alterniflora has widely invaded the saltmarshes of the Yangtze River Estuary and brought negative effects to the ecosystem. Remote sensing technique has recently been used to monitor its distribution, but the similar morphology and canopy structure among S. alterniflora and its neighbor species make it difficult even with high-resolution images. Nevertheless, these species have diverge...

Climate warming has been shown to advance the phenology of species. Asynchronous changes in phenology between interacting species may disrupt feeding interactions (phenological mismatch), which could have tremendous consequences for ecosystem functioning. Long-term field observations have suggested asynchronous shifts in phenology with warming, whereas experimental studies have not been conclus...

Changes in phenology are correlated with climate change. However, we still struggle to understand the traits making species susceptible to climate change, and the implications of species' reactions for communities and food webs. Butterflies and moths are an ecologically important group that have shown pronounced phenological changes over the last decades. Tests using a > 150-year dataset from 5...

Individuals often considerably differ in the timing of their life-cycle events, with major consequences for individual fitness, and, ultimately, for population dynamics. Phenological variation can arise from genetic effects but also from epigenetic modifications in DNA expression and translation. Here, we tested if CpG methylation at the poly-Q and 5'-UTR loci of the photoperiodic Clock gene pr...

Accumulating scientific evidence has demonstrated widespread shifts in the biological seasons. These shifts may modify seasonal interspecific interactions, with consequent impacts upon reproductive success and survival. However, current understanding of these impacts is based upon a limited number of studies that adopt a simplified 'bottom-up' food-chain paradigm, at a local scale. I argue that...

Accurate mapping of land cover on a regional scale is useful for climate and environmental modeling. In this study, we present a novel land cover classification product based on spectral and phenological information for the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China. The product is derived at a 500 m spatial resolution using an innovative approach employing moderate resolution imaging spe...

Reproductive phenological pattern on tetrasporophytes and carposporophytes of Grateloupia subpectinata thalli were observed at Yangyang, on the middle east coast of Korea from January to December 2013. DNA sequences of cox1 gene from 48 selected samples were compared to assure that sample collection is single species, and they were all identical G. subpectinata. Density, length and width of tha...

A refined hybrid polarimetric decomposition and inversion method for soil moisture estimation under vegetation is investigated for its potential to retrieve soil moisture from vegetated soils in TERENO observatories. The refined algorithm is applied on Lband fully polarimetric data acquired by DLR’s novel F-SAR sensor. Two flight and field measurement campaigns were conducted in 2011 and 2012 f...