Hydrologic and ecologic studies in mountainous terrain are sensitive to the temporal and spatial distribution of precipitation. In this study a geostatistical model, Auto-Searched Orographic and Atmospheric Effects Detrended Kriging (ASOADeK), is introduced to map mountain precipitation using only precipitation gauge data. The ASOADeK model considers both precipitation spatial covariance and or...

Areas affected by land degradation in Sub-Saharan West Africa between 1982 and 2012 are identified using time-series analysis of vegetation index data derived from satellites. The residual trend (RESTREND) of a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series is defined as the fraction of the difference between the observed NDVI and the NDVI predicted from climate data. It has been wid...

Composite materials have been used extensively in various applications, such as mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, and aviation thanks to their interesting mechanical properties. However, a substantial drawback in the use of such composite materials is that they absorb a significant amount of moisture when exposed to severe hygrothermal conditions. This factor dramatically affects t...

Soil particle size distribution PSD i.e., clay, silt, sand, and rock contents information is one of critical factors for understanding water cycle since it affects almost all of water cycle processes, e.g., drainage, runoff, soil moisture, evaporation, and evapotranspiration. With information about soil PSD, we can estimate almost all soil hydraulic properties e.g., saturated soil moisture, fie...

a non-destructive, rapid and low-cost determination of date fruit moisture content is one of the most determining factors in maturity assessment and processing of this valuable product. on the other hand, the potential of near infrared (nir) spectroscopy in nondestructive internal quality evaluation of agricultural products has been proved throughout several studies. in this research, three mod...

The durability of adhesive joints is of special concern in structural applications and moisture has been identified as one of the major factors affecting joint durability. This is especially important in applications where joints are exposed to varying environmental conditions throughout their life. This paper presents a methodology to predict the stresses in adhesive joints under cyclic moistu...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is an essential property for soil function, fertility and sustainability of agricultural systems. It can be measured with visible and near-infrared reflectance (VIS-NIR) spectroscopy efficiently based on empirical equations and spectra data for air/oven-dried samples. However, the spectral signal is interfered with by soil moisture content (MC) under in situ conditions...

Deposition processes control the properties of thin films; they can also introduce high residual stresses, which can be relieved by delamination and fracture. Tungsten films with high 1–2 GPa compressive residual stresses were sputter deposited on top of thin (below 100 nm) copper and diamond-like carbon (DLC) films. Highly stressed films store large amounts of strain energy. When the strain en...

Accurate prediction of soil moisture in a land surface model (LSM) is critical in improving land surface and atmosphere interactions in the atmospheric general circulation models used in numerical weather prediction and global climate models. Gravity is a relatively new source of remotely sensed data, available since the launch of the twin Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) satelli...

The effect of various substances on the relationship between residual moisture content and the viability of freeze-dried lactic acid bacteria has been studied. Compounds such as polymers, which display considerable ability in displacing water, showed no protective action during freeze-drying. Adonitol, on the other hand, produced the smallest change in water content at various times during dryi...