[1] We compare European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts 15-year reanalysis (ERA-15) moisture over the tropical oceans with satellite observations and the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) National Center for Atmospheric Research 40-year reanalysis. When systematic differences in moisture between the observational and reanalysis data sets are removed, the NCEP d...

Land surface model validation at distributed scales is important for model improvements. Recent advances in satellite technology provide an opportunity for distributed calibration and validation of land surface models. In the past years, a number of active and passive microwave soil moisture products have become available. While passive microwave soil moisture is the preferred approach for soil...

The growth and yield of crops in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world is driven by the amount of soil moisture available to the crop through rainfall and irrigation. Various methods have been developed for quantifying the soil moisture status of agricultural crops. Recent technological advances in remote sensing have shown that soil moisture can be measured with a variety of remote sensi...

Soil moisture estimates are considered as a valuable input for various environment models including weather forecasting, water management, agriculture, and forestry applications. Generally, the network of soil moisture observations is not dense (typically only few observation points are available within each state) enough to meet the spatial resolution requirements of these applications. Theref...

Knowledge of temporal and spatial variation in root zone soil moisture content across Australia is vital for a wide range of environmental and socio-economic activities. However, such information is not currently available, due to an inability to monitor with ground-based point measurement techniques at an appropriate spatial resolution, and the uncertainty associated with land surface model pr...

Different heat-moisture levels were applied to native starches from different cultivars of sweet potatoes available in Sri Lanka (Wariyapola red, Wariyapola white, Pallepola variety, Malaysian variety and CARI 273) to study the digestibility level. Samples were treated with 20, 25, and 30% moisture at 85°C and 120°C for 6 h and in vitro starch digestibility was tested with porcine pancreatin en...

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...

Agricultural drought is defined as a shortage of moisture in the root zone of plants. Recently available satellite-based remote sensing data have accelerated development of drought early warning system by providing continuous soil moisture information in space and time. Nonetheless, the shallow sensing depth (top few cm) and uncertain accuracy of currentlyavailable satellite soil moisture retri...