A Land Surface Microwave Emission Model (LSMEM) is used to derive soil moisture estimates over Iowa during the Soil Moisture Experiment 2002 (SMEX02) field campaign, using brightness temperature data from the Advanced Microwave Sounding Radiometer (AMSR)-E satellite. Spatial distributions of the near-surface soil moisture are produced using the LSMEM, with data from the North American Land Data...

The use of microwave radar and radiometer in estimating soil moisture and vegetation parameters of land has shown a good potential. However, both experimental activities and theoretical results seem to indicate that important limitations to the actual use of monostatic radar exist. They are: in soil moisture applications the simultaneous disturbing effects of soil roughness and vegetation cover...

In semiarid or arid conditions, the change of root-zone soil moisture can be almost instantaneously reflected by vegetation through biophysical process. This study investigated feasibility of mapping root-zone soil moisture using MODIS-derived NDVI via statistic approach at three sites (New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas) selected from the Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN). These three sites rep...

this study was carried out to investigate the effective environmental factors in the distribution of vegetation in zirkouh rangelands of qaen. after delimitation of the study area, sampling of soil and vegetation were performed using randomized- systematic method. vegetation cover was recorded by using braun-blanquet combined abundance-cover scale in each sample. within each sample, one profile...

The observation of spatially distributed soil moisture fields is an essential component for a large range of hydrological, climate, and agricultural applications. While direct measurements are expensive and limited to small spatial domains, the inversion of airborne and satellite L-band radiometer data has shown the potential to provide spatial estimates of near surface soil moisture from the l...

Human-induced changes of the environment and their possible impacts on temperate forest understory plant communities have been examined in many studies. However, the relative contribution of individual environmental factors to these changes in the herb layer is still unclear. In this study, we used vegetation survey data covering a time period of 21 years and collected from 143 permanent plots ...

[1] Accounting for small‐scale spatial heterogeneity of soil moisture ( ) is required to enhance the predictive skill of land surface models. In this paper, we present the results of the development, calibration, and performance evaluation of a downscaling model based on multifractal theory using aircraft‐based (800 m) estimates collected during the southern Great Plains experiment in 1997 (SGP...

Surface soil moisture is a key variable used to describe water and energy exchanges at the land surface/atmosphere interface. Passive microwave remotely sensed data have great potential for providing estimates of soil moisture with good temporal repetition on a daily basis and on a regional scale (f 10 km). However, the effects of vegetation cover, soil temperature, snow cover, topography, and ...

Rangelands are very diverse, and they spread from low vegetation desert areas to those with more rainfall and more cover In saline and desert areas, there are many restrictions on vegetation establishment, hence the use of amendments. The study area is located south of Nazarabad city in Alborz province, Iran. In this study, different amendments, such as mineral biochar, arbuscular mycorrhiza fu...

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...