Understanding radar backscatter sensitivity to vegetation water dynamics: Sub-daily variations in ground-based experiments

Observing vegetation water dynamics from space offers insights into plant-water relations and water and carbon fluxes across ecosystems at local to global scales. A promising technique to observe water in the vegetation layer is radar, an active form of microwave remote sensing. Interactions between microwaves and vegetation material depend on...

Detecting forest response to droughts with global observations of vegetation water content

Droughts in a warming climate have become more common and more extreme, making understanding forest responses to water stress increasingly pressing. Analysis of water stress in trees has long focused on water potential in xylem and leaves, which influences stomatal closure and water flow through the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. At the...

Active microwave remote sensing of the Amazon forest region

The Amazon rainforest is among the most vital ecosystems on earth, holding about a quarter of the global terrestrial carbon sink. Since 2005, three 100-year return period droughts have occurred, the likes of which have the potential to turn the forest from a carbon sink to a source – meaning disastrous consequences for the planet. Monitoring of...