Nodding needlegrass [Nassella cernua (Stebbins & R.M. Love) Barkworth], a California native perennial grass, was tested for its effects on grapevine and soil–water relations in a drip-irrigated vineyard in Parlier, CA. Vine water status and in-row and between-row soil moisture (at 0.3 m, 0.6 m, 0.9 m, 1.2 m, and 1.5 m) were monitored semiweekly from June to September. There was no overall signi...

Wireless underground sensor networks (WUSN) are a natural extension of the wireless sensor networks (WSN) phenomenon to the underground environment. In this work, experimental measurements are presented at the frequency of 433 MHz, which show a good agreement with the theoretical studies. Experiments are run to examine the received signal strength and the packet error rate for aboveground-to-un...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the potential of X-band SAR measurements (COSMO-SkyMed and TerraSAR-X) made over bare soils for the estimation of soil moisture and surface geometry parameters at a semi-arid site in Tunisia (North Africa). Radar signals acquired with different configurations (HH and VV polarizations, incidence angles of 26° and 36°) are statistically compared with ground mea...

[1] Radiometric sensitivity to soil moisture at 1.4 GHz through a corn canopy at a maximum biomass of 8.0 kg m 2 (water column density of 6.3 kg m ) was much higher than expected. The magnitude of the measured sensitivity of horizontally polarized brightness temperature to the 0–3 cm volumetric soil water content was at least 1.5 K per 0.01 m m 3 and could have been as high as 2.5 K per 0.01 m ...

Organic soil horizons function as important controls on the thermal state of near-surface soil and permafrost in high-latitude ecosystems. The thermal conductivity of organic horizons is typically lower than mineral soils and is closely linked to moisture content, bulk density, and water phase. In this study, we examined the relationship between thermal conductivity and soil moisture for differ...

Multisensor capacitance probes (MCPs) have traditionally been used for soil moisture monitoring and irrigation scheduling. This paper presents a new application of these probes, namely the simultaneous monitoring of ponded water level, soil moisture, and temperature profile, conditions which are particularly important for rice crops in temperate growing regions and for rice grown with prolonged...

Predicting the hydrologic consequences of biomass cropping systems requires an understanding of how different crops and management practices affect soil hydraulic properties across space and time. To inform such predictions, I investigated the impacts of five biomass cropping systems on the hydraulic properties of soils across a landscape gradient in wet, dry, and average rainfall years. I used...

Understanding the hydrological dynamics of boreal wetland ecosystems (peatlands) is essential in order to better manage hydropower inter-annual productivity at the La Grande basin (Northern Quebec, QC, Canada). Given the remoteness and the huge dimension of the La Grande basin, it is imperative to develop remote sensing monitoring techniques to retrieve hydrological parameters. The main objecti...

The successful radar mapping of soil moisture under vegetation canopies would be a boon to agriculture, global climate change studies, water resource management and other areas. Toward this end, a series of polarimetric radar measurements of soybeans over the entire growing season of 1996 were made at Land C-band at the Long Term Ecological Research site at the Kellogg Biological Station, Hicko...

The objective of this work was to explain an apparent contradiction in the literature related to the relationship between mean and variance (or standard deviation) of soil moisture fields. Some studies found an increase in soil moisture variance with decreasing mean soil moisture, while others showed a decrease. The evidence of maximum variance in the mid-range of mean soil moisture was also re...