This paper presents an approach to estimating soil moisture content through fitting an inverted Gaussian function to the continuum in soil spectra. The soil moisture Gaussian model (SMGM) estimates the water content by the declining reflectance in the near infrared (NIR) and shortwave infrared (SWIR) regions, 1.2–2.5 Am, due to the spreading of the fundamental water absorption at 2.8 Am. Convex...

This study investigates the impact of abnormally moist soil conditions across the southern Great Plains upon the overland reintensification of North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Erin (2007). This is tested by analyzing the contributions of three soil moisture–related signals—a seasonal signal, an along-track rainfall signal, and an early postlandfall rainfall signal—to the intensity of the vortex....

Understanding variability patterns in soil moisture is critical for determining an optimal sampling scheme both in space and in time, as well as for determining optimal management zones for agricultural applications that involve moisture status. In this study, distributed near-surface gravimetric soil moisture samples were collected across a 3.3 ha field in central Illinois for ten dates in the...

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...

Soil moisture plays a key role in vegetation restoration and ecosystem stability in arid and semiarid regions. The response of soil moisture to rainfall pulses is an important hydrological process, which is strongly influenced by land use during the implementation of vegetation restoration. In this study, vertical soil moisture variations of woodland (Pinus tabulaeformis), native grassland (Sti...

Soil moisture gradients along hillslopes in humid watersheds, although indicated by vegetation gradients and by studies using models, have been difficult to confirm empirically. While soil properties and topographic features are the two general physiographic factors controlling soil moisture on hillslopes, studies have shown conflicting results regarding which factor is more important. The rela...

The soil moisture content is of great importance for numerical weather forecasts and has been identified as one of the parameter products of EUMETSAT’s Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (Land SAF). Soil moisture strongly affects the surface energy balance and therefore near surface temperature and humidity. Conversely, temperature observations may be used to infer the soil...

Soil moisture is an important state variable in the hydrologic cycle, and its spatiotemporal distribution depends on many geophysical processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales. To achieve a better accounting of the water and energy budgets at the land-atmosphere boundary, it is necessary to better understand the spatiotemporal variability of soil moisture under different hydr...

The improvements of polarimetric SAR data inversion algorithms are discussed and presented. The confounding influence of roughness and vegetation cover on the estimation of the soil moisture contents are considered in the inversion algorithm that estimates moisture content and roughness parameters simultaneously from the pertinent combination of polarization measurements. The estimation of soil...