Soil evaporation can signifi cantly infl uence energy fl ux partitioning of partially vegetated surfaces, ultimately affecting plant transpiration. While important, quantifi cation of soil evaporation, separately from canopy transpiration, is challenging. Techniques for measuring soil evaporation exist and continually improve. The large variability in soil water content requires that there be c...

Soil organic matter has positive consequences eht rof quality and productivityof soil and also environment, agricultural and biological sustainability and conservation ofbiodiversity and soil. Organic matter plays an important role in the physical and chemicalprocesses of soil and thus, it is of a great effect on the spectral characteristics of soil. Thisstudy was done in order to develop the m...

The flux-adjusting surface data assimilation system (FASDAS) is developed to provide continuous adjustments for initial soil moisture and temperature and for surface air temperature and water vapor mixing ratio for mesoscale models. In the FASDAS approach, surface air temperature and water vapor mixing ratio are directly assimilated by using the analyzed surface observations. Then, the differen...

Repeated application may increase rates of pesticide dissipation in soil and reduce persistence. The potential for this to occur was investigated for the fungicide, tebuconazole (alpha-[2-(4-chlorophenyl)ethyl]-alpha-(1,1-dimethylethyl)-1H-1,2,4-triazole-1-ethanol), when used for peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) production. Soil samples were collected from peanut plots after each of four tebuconazo...

Many soils of the Mediterranean region with a semiarid climate are subjected to progressive degradation as a result of water erosion. Biosolids and municipal solid wastes (MSW) were surface-applied once at three rates (40, 80, and 120 Mg ha(-1)) to different plots in a degraded semiarid ecosystem. The study was conducted to determine the effects of such applications on soil chemical properties ...

Soil is a complex physical and biological system that provides support, water, nutrients and oxygen to the plants. Apart from these, it acts as a connecting link between inorganic, organic and living components of the ecosystem. In recent years, presence of xenobiotics, alterations in the natural soil environment, application of pesticides/inorganic fertilizers, percolation of contaminated surf...

Soil depth tends to vary from a few centimeters to several meters, depending on many natural and environmental factors. We hypothesize that the cumulative effect of these factors on soil depth, which is chiefly dependent on the process of biogeochemical weathering, is particularly affected by soil porewater (i.e., solute) transport and infiltration from the land surface. Taking into account evi...

A robust ground penetrating radar (GPR) signal processing approach is developed and applied to the sensing of surface soil and ice/water layers as well as near-surface buried objects. The principal technique relies on a reference set of waveforms which are tested for optimal matching with measured radar reflections to be analyzed. In principle the reference set can be based on measurements as w...

Various components of the land surface, their individual hydrological processes and the process-oriented models are reviewed in this paper, with the focus on their application in global climate models (GCMs). The Biosphere–Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS) is examined regarding its performance for three different surfaces (crop, forest and grass), with available data from HAPEX-MOBILHY, ABRACOS...