This paper reports on the analysis of a 2.5 year-long time series of ASAR wide swath mode (WSM) observations for characterizing the soil moisture dynamics. The employed ASAR WSM data set consists of 152 VV-polarized scenes acquired in the period between April 2005 and September 2007 over the Naqu river basin located on the Tibetan Plateau. For four different spatial domains, with areas of 30x30...

As one of soil dynamics properties, soil moisture content is an important factor of soil fertility which counts for much to crop growth situation and scientific irrigation management. A design plan of regional spatial variation of soil moisture measurement was introduced. Its main job includes the use of differential GPS technology for each sampling points in farmland, collecting data of high-p...

A pot experiment was conducted to examine the effects of.various fertilizers on the dynamics of soil-borne DDTs and their subsequent impacts on DDTs uptake by a test plant. The results show that there was a significantly lower soil residual DDTs concentration in the iron-rich fertilizer-treated soil than in other fertilizer-treated soils. However, all the non-iron-rich fertilizers showed no sig...

Resource utilization by earthworms affects soil C and N dynamics and further colonization of invasive earthworms. By applying 13C-labeled Tabebuia heterophylla leaves and 15N-labeled Andropogon glomeratus grass, we investigated resource utilization by three earthworm species (invasive endogeic Pontoscolex corethrurus, native anecic Estherella sp., and native endogeic Onychochaeta borincana) and...

Water is the most limiting factor in deserts, yet researchers have very different emphases on the relative importance of water, depending on the organisms that they study. For example, soil moisture is considered the most critical factor for recruitment of desert succulent plants, and numerous studies have linked plant distribution patterns with soil texture, rainfall, and soil moisture. By com...

The number of studies focused on the transformation and sequestration of soil organic carbon (C) has dramatically increased in recent years due to growing interest in understanding the global C cycle. While it is readily accepted that terrestrial C dynamics are heavily influenced by the catabolic and anabolic activities of microorganisms, the incorporation of microbial biomass components into s...

[1] Methane (CH4) emissions from wetland ecosystems in nothern high latitudes provide a potentially positive feedback to global climate warming. Large uncertainties still remain in estimating wetland CH4 emisions at regional scales. Here we develop a statistical model of CH4 emissions using an artificial neural network (ANN) approach and field observations of CH4 fluxes. Six explanatory variabl...

[1] Correct representations of root functioning, such as root water uptake and hydraulic redistribution, are critically important for modeling the responses of vegetation to droughts and seasonal changes in soil moisture content. However, these processes are poorly represented in global land surface models. In this study, we incorporated two root functions: a root water uptake function which as...

Microbial life in soil is perceived as one of the most interesting ecological systems, with microbial communities exhibiting remarkable adaptability to vast dynamic environmental conditions. At the same time, it is a notoriously challenging system to understand due to its complexity including physical, chemical, and biological factors in synchrony. This study presents a spatially-resolved model...

Due to the competition for water resources, increasing efforts are done in order to use more efficiently irrigation water in agriculture. The purpose of this paper is to find out daily soil water content (SWC) dynamics during depletion cycles in order to emphasize its pattern and compare daylight vs. night (dark) and morning vs. afternoon SWC dynamics in an irrigated peach (Prunus persica [L.] ...