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...

Moisture in the topsoil: From large-scale observations to small-scale process understanding

The boundary that separates the earth from the atmosphere is a crucial zone of study for meteorology and hydrology. Here, solar energy is partitioned into sensible heat which drives atmospheric circulation, latent heat needed for evaporation from the soil and transpiration of vegetation, and soil heat which warms the subsurface. Precipitation is...

Surface and subsurface water from space: On the integration of microwave remote sensing observations with flood prediction systems

The technique of active microwave remote sensing has made much progress toward its high potential to monitor water storage changes in terrestrial surface and subsurface water bodies at various spatial and temporal scales. The number of studies demonstrating the support these data can offer in hydrological and hydraulic model building, model...

Regional vegetation water effects on satellite soil moisture estimations for West Africa

Soil moisture information is a vital parameter for water resources planning and food production. In particular for West Africa, where income largely depends on rainfed agriculture, reliable information on available soil water is required for modeling and prediction. Over large areas and, specifically, for data scarce regions, satellite soil...