Predicting the transfer of radionuclides in the environment for normal release, accidental, disposal or remediation scenarios, in order to assess exposure, requires the availability of important generic parameter values. One of the key parameters in environmental assessment, is the solid liquid distribution coefficient, K d , which is used to predict radionuclide–soil interaction and subsequent...

Soil variability is a complex attribute that can affect geotechnical engineering design. This paper presents the initial stage of a study into the variability of soil proprieties at the Port of Navegantes, southern Brazil. This study is based on laboratory and field tests that were done as part of the Port enlargement planning. The database consisted of SPT, Vane, soil characterization, oedomet...

Land surface models (LSM) are widely used as scientific and operational tools to simulate mass and energy fluxes within the soil vegetation atmosphere continuum for numerous applications in meteorology, hydrology or for geobiochemistry studies. A reliable parameterization of these models is important to improve the simulation skills. 5 Soil moisture is a key variable, linking the water and ener...

[1] Current land surface models use increasingly complex descriptions of the processes that they represent. Increase in complexity is accompanied by an increase in the number of model parameters, many of which cannot be measured directly at large spatial scales. A Monte Carlo framework was used to evaluate the sensitivity and identifiability of ten parameters controlling surface and subsurface ...

Passive microwave remote sensing by the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite enables observations of surface soil moisture at global scale. This involves a retrieval process that uses a radiative transfer model to relate satellite-observed radiances to geophysical variables such as soil dielectric constant and soil moisture. The L-MEB (L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere) ba...

Soil moisture plays a key role in global water cycles. In the study, soil moisture retrievals from airborne microwave radiometer observations using a single-frequency algorithm were presented. The algorithm is based on a simplified radiative transfer (tauomega) model and the influence of both the roughness and vegetation is combined into a single parameter in the algorithm. The microwave polari...

An analysis of the behaviour of the soil system considered as an active medium with distributed energy sources was undertaken. This approach enabled the authors to build a heuristic model of soil which accounts for processes of organic substance production, migration and utilisation. The soil body is presented as a spatially distributed trophic chain with non-linear interactions of adjacent lin...

The importance of land surface-atmosphere interactions, principally the effects of soil moisture, on hydrological, meteorological, and ecological processes has gained widespread recognition over recent decades. Its high spatial and temporal variability however, makes soil moisture a difficult parameter to measure and monitor effectively using traditional methods. Microwave remote sensing techno...

Geosynthetics have proved to be suitable for reinforced soil retaining walls. Based on the increasing uses of geosynthetic reinforced soil systems in the regions, which bear frequent earthquakes, the study of dynamic behavior of structures seems necessary. Determining the reinforcement forces is; therefore, one of the most important and main points of discussions in designing retaining walls, b...