A synergistic fusion of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) L2 soil moisture with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-derived land surface temperature (LST) and several water/vegetation indices for agricultural drought monitoring was tested. The rationale of the calculation is based on the inverse relationship between LST and vegetation condition, related in turn w...

Passage of agricultural runoff through vegetated drainage ditches has been shown to reduce the amount of pesticides, such as atrazine, exiting out of agricultural watersheds. Previous studies have found that microbial communities in soil from fields treated with atrazine display enhanced rates of atrazine degradation. However, no studies have examined the potential for atrazine degradation in d...

Carbon sequestration refers to the process of transferring carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere into the soil. A significant fraction of carbon stored in the soil is stable and, consequently, can remain in the soil for decades or longer. This process of transferring or “sequestering” carbon from the atmosphere helps off-set emissions from combustion of fossil fuel and other human-related ac...

The aim of the studies was to compare the composition of soil bacterial metabiomes originating from urbanized areas and areas con¬taminated with hydrocarbons with those from agricultural soil and forest soil obtained from a protected wild-life park area. It should be noted that hydrocarbons are everywhere therefore bacteria capable of their utilization are present in every soil type. In the hyd...

This study reports on the use of PALSAR data to retrieve soil moisture content over agricultural areas. An algorithm transforming temporal series of PALSAR data into soil moisture content by using a constrained minimization technique, integrating a priori information on soil parameters, is presented. The algorithm applies to winter wheat and has been assessed on simulated and experimental data ...

Soil moisture was assessed with quad-polarimetric TerraSAR-X and dual-polarimetric (HH/VV) TanDEM-X data from the agricultural region of Wallerfing, Germany. The investigations included a bare soil case in April 2009 (TerraSAR-X) and a time series of 04-07/2011 (TanDEM-X) to estimate soil moisture on bare and vegetated soils including different agricultural crop types at various phenological st...

Sustainability of agriculture is challenged by increasing sprawl in urban agglomerations. Under increasing agglomeration economies in large and even medium sized cities, more and more soil is being subtracted to agriculture, depriving agricultural activities of the main production factor. The extent to which the expanding urbanization threatens agricultural development depends on the urban spat...

1Research plant pathologist, USDA ARS San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center, Parlier, CA 93648; 2formerly Research soil scientist, USDA ARS San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center, currently Extension specialist, Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA 95616; and 3formerly Agricultural engineer, USDA ARS San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center...

Data drawn from a global compilation of studies quantitatively confirm the long-articulated contention that erosion rates from conventionally plowed agricultural fields average 1-2 orders of magnitude greater than rates of soil production, erosion under native vegetation, and long-term geological erosion. The general equivalence of the latter indicates that, considered globally, hillslope soil ...

The word organic, applied to fertilizers, indicates that the nutrients are derived from the remains or by‐products of a once‐living organism. Farmers are continually searching for alternatives to synthetic inorganic fertilizers to alleviate the escalating production costs associated with the increasing costs of energy and fertilizers and the problems of soil and surface water deterioration asso...