The aim of this work was to determine the appropriate moisture regime, attained by leachate recycling, to achieve the highest municipal solid waste (MSW) biodegradation rate. To this end, leachate characteristics, methane production rate and changes in degraded refuse were studied. Twenty laboratory-scale bioreactors were loaded with MSW from the landfill of Pátzcuaro (Mexico), four were used a...

It has been proposed that the impact of moisture on atmospheric eddy circulations can be approximated using a reduced effective stratification defined in terms of a parameter λ, which quantifies the asymmetry between upward and downward motions. Here λ is analyzed for the midlatitude regime using baroclinic lifecycles computed with the Weather Research and Forecast model. Vertical velocities ar...

The relationship between biodiversity and biomass is an essential element of the natural ecosystem functioning. Our research aims at assessing the effects of species richness on the aboveground biomass and the ecological driver of this relationship in a primary Pinus kesiya forest. We sampled 112 plots of the primary P. kesiya forests in Yunnan Province. The general linear model and the structu...

A spatially explicit forest gap model was developed for the Sierra Nevada, California, and is the first of its kind because it integrates climate, fire and forest pattern. The model simulates a forest stand as a grid of 15×15 m forest plots and simulates the growth of individual trees within each plot. Fuel inputs are generated from each individual tree according to tree size and species. Fuel ...

An NMR imaging technique published in literature was adapted to investigate the role of glass transition on Fickian and non-Fickian modes of moisture transport in pasta. The modified technique allowed measuring the moisture distribution in samples with initial moisture content from 10% to 50% or higher. A change in slope in the signal intensity versus moisture content curves indicated different...

s: A combination of field measurements, continuous monitoring, and numerical modeling were used to evaluate soil moisture regimes at four sites across a landscape gradient of the Heihe River Basin (HRB). Recorded data of precipitation, irrigation, and floods were used to build the model, and an optimization technique was employed to calibrate the parameters. Based on the optimized parameters an...

In regions affected by seasonal and permanently frozen conditions soil moisture influences the thermal regime of the ground as well as its ice content, which is one of the main factors controlling the sensitivity of mountain permafrost to climate changes. In this study, several well established soil moisture monitoring techniques were combined with data from geophysical measurements to assess t...

The "varying constraints hypothesis" of fire in natural ecosystems postulates that the extent of fire in an ecosystem would differ according to the relative contribution of fuel load and fuel moisture available, factors that vary globally along a spatial gradient of climatic conditions. We examined if the globally widespread seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTFs) can be placed as a single enti...