With the recently launched Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, it is very important to have a complete understanding of the radiative transfer model for better soil moisture retrievals and to direct future research and field campaigns in areas of necessity. Because natural systems show great variability and complexity with respect to soil, land cover, topography, precipitation, there e...

[1] This study presents a systematic and integrated analysis of the sensitivity of the available satellite observations to in situ soil moisture measurements. Although none of these satellites is optimized for land surface characterization, before the launches of the SMOSand HYDROS-dedicated missions they are the only potential sources of global soil moisture measurements. The satellite observa...

In May 1999 the SMOS Earth Explorer Opportunity mission was selected by ESA to provide global soil moisture and sea salinity maps using the MIRAS L-band aperture synthesis interferometric radiometer. At this frequency there is a high dynamic range of the soil moisture signature and surface roughness effects are small, as well as vegetation effects. However, they cannot be neglected at large obs...

[1] The present paper proposes an empirical approach for the modeling of vegetation development, using moisture measurements only. The study is based simply on the use of two databases: one containing soil moisture products derived from ERS scatterometer data over the period 1991–2006 and the other containing normalized difference vegetation indices (NDVI) derived from advanced very high resolu...

BACKGROUND Mowing is a widely adopted management practice for the semiarid steppe in China and affects CH(4) exchange. However, the magnitude and the underlying mechanisms for CH(4) uptake in response to mowing remain uncertain. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS In two consecutive growing seasons, we measured the effect of mowing on CH(4) uptake in a steppe community. Vegetation was mowed to 2 c...

1  Abstract— A simple approach for correcting the effect of vegetation in the estimation of the surface soil moisture (w S) from L-band passive microwave observations is presented in this study. The approach is based on semi-empirical relationships between soil moisture and the polarized reflectance including the effect of the vegetation optical depth which is parameterized here as a function ...

Climate models project significant twenty-first-century declines in water availability over the American West from anthropogenic warming. However, the physicalmechanisms underpinning this response are poorly characterized, as are the uncertainties from vegetation’s modulation of evaporative losses. To understand the drivers and uncertainties of future hydroclimate in theAmericanWest, a 35-membe...

Retrieving information on forest biomass and soil under vegetation is crucial for all studies concerning global changes and carbon balance. The capability of microwaves in penetrating vegetation covers is well known, but only few studies have investigated emission from soil under forests and the contribution of single tree elements to total radiation. To further examine quantitatively these asp...

In this paper, the results of an experiment carried out for exploiting the capabilities of X-band Cosmo-SkyMed data in the monitoring of soil and vegetation characteristics are summarized. SAR data have been collected in two agricultural areas in Italy and compared with ground truth measurements of soil and vegetation parameters. A rather good sensitivity to vegetation features, biomass and the...

Abstract This paper presents a quantitative account of vegetation–environmental factor relationships in arid rangelands. Vegetation cover was recorded using Braun-Blanquet combined abundance-cover scale in each quadrat. Within each quadrat, one profile was dug and soil samples being taken at 0-20cm and 20-100cm depths. Under study physical-chemical characteristics included texture, lime, orga...