Search results for "Water content"
showing 10 items of 380 documents
Derivation of Rainfall Thresholds for Flash Flood Warning in a Sicilian Basin Using a Hydrological Model
2016
Abstract The damages caused by flash floods are among the most onerous in terms of loss of lives and damage to properties. Derivation of rainfall threshold is one of the approaches commonly used for the development of flash flood warning systems. Specifically, rainfall threshold is the rainfall amount that, for a given basin area and duration, is enough to cause flooding and, therefore, it indicates the maximal sustainable rainfall for a basin. The aim of this paper is deriving flash flood-rainfall thresholds for a Sicilian basin (Italy) throughout a deterministic approach. The conceptual hydrological model TOPDM was used to estimate the amount of rainfall that, for given duration, hydrolog…
A conceptual dynamic vegetation-soil model for arid and semiarid zones
2007
Plant ecosystems in arid and semiarid zones show high complexity from the point of view of water resources, since they depend on water availability to carry out their vital processes. In these climates, water stress is the main factor controlling vegetation development. The available water in the system results from a water balance where the soil, vegetation and the atmosphere are the key issues; but it is the vegetation which modulates (to a great extent) the total balance of water and the mechanisms of the feedback between soil and atmosphere, being the knowledge about soil moisture quite relevant for assessing available water and, as a consequence, for growth and plants maintenance and t…
Assessing the performance of thermal inertia and Hydrus models to estimate surface soil water content
2017
The knowledge of soil water content (SWC) dynamics in the upper soil layer is important for several hydrological processes. Due to the difficulty of assessing the spatial and temporal SWC dynamics in the field, some model-based approaches have been proposed during the last decade. The main objective of this work was to assess the performance of two approaches to estimate SWC in the upper soil layer under field conditions: the physically-based thermal inertia and the Hydrus model. Their validity was firstly assessed under controlled laboratory conditions. Thermal inertia was firstly validated in laboratory conditions using the transient line heat source (TLHS) method. Then, it was applied in…
Optimizing subsurface dripline installation depth with Hydrus 2D/3D to improve irrigation water use efficiency in the central Tunisia
2015
The main objective of the work is to optimize drip installation depth for Eggplant crop irrigated with surface or subsurface drip irrigation systems to improve irrigation Water Use Effeciency (WUE), by means of field measurements and simulations carried out with Hydrus-2D model. Initially, a comparison between simulated Soil Water Contents (SWC) and the corresponding measured in two plots, in which laterals with coextruded emitters are laid on the soil surface (T0) and at 20 cm depth (T20), respectively. In order to choose the best position of the lateral, the results of different simulation run, carried out by choosing a deeper installation (T45) depth. Simulated SWC’s resulted fairly clos…
Partitioning of Aerosol Particles in Mixed-phase Clouds at a High Alpine Site
2007
6 German Aerospace Centre, D-82234, Wessling, Germany * Now at Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland Abstract The partitioning of aerosol particles between the cloud and the interstitial phase (i.e., unactivated aerosol) has been investigated during several Cloud and Aerosol Characterization Experiments (CLACE) conducted in winter and summer 2004 and winter 2005 at the high alpine research station Jungfraujoch (3,580 m altitude, Switzerland). Ambient air was sampled using different inlets in order to determine the scavenged fraction of aerosol particles, F Scav , and of black carbon, F Scav,BC . They denote the fraction of the aerosol volume con…
Optimization of image parameters using a hyperspectral library application to soil identification and moisture estimation
2009
The growing number of sensors raises questions about the image parameters required for the application, soil identification and moisture estimation. Hyperspectral images are also known to contain highly redundant information. Hence not all the spectral bands are needed for the satisfactory classification of the soil types. Hence, the work was aimed at obtaining these optimal spectral bands for identifying the soil types and to use these spectral bands to estimate the moisture content of the soils using the method proposed by Whiting et.al.
An assessment of the differences between spatial resolution and grid size for the SMAP enhanced soil moisture product over homogeneous sites
2018
Abstract Satellite-based passive microwave remote sensing typically involves a scanning antenna that makes measurements at irregularly spaced locations. These locations can change on a day to day basis. Soil moisture products derived from satellite-based passive microwave remote sensing are usually resampled to a fixed Earth grid that facilitates their use in applications. In many cases the grid size is finer than the actual spatial resolution of the observation, and often this difference is not well understood by the user. Here, this issue was examined for the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) enhanced version of the passive-based soil moisture product, which has a grid size of 9-km and …
Preliminary assessment of an integrated SMOS and MODIS application for global agricultural drought monitoring
2020
An application of the Soil Moisture Agricultural Drought Index (SMADI) for global agricultural drought monitoring is presented. The index integrates surface soil moisture from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature (LST) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and allows for global drought monitoring at medium spatial scales (0.05°). Biweekly maps of SMADI were obtained from year 2010 to 2015 over all agricultural areas on Earth. The SMADI time-series were compared with state-of-the-art drought indices over the Iberian Peninsula. Results show a good agreement between SMADI and the …
Comparing two methods of analysis of single-ring infiltrometer data for a sandy–loam soil
2009
Abstract The single-ring pressure infiltrometer (PI) with the steady-state Two-Ponding-Depth (TPD) application method were developed to simultaneously determine the saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, K fs , and the α ⁎-parameter in the field. Methods of analysis of transient PI data are also available but they have received little testing so far. The transient WU method and the TPD method were compared for a sandy-loam soil. A linearization technique of the infiltration curve yielded more reliable K fs and α ⁎ results (i.e., falling within expected ranges) than a non-linear optimization technique. The WU method gave both positive and reasonable K fs and α ⁎ values for all infiltration t…
Appendix – Additional Measurements
2016
This appendix deals with the determination of different soil physical and hydraulic characteristics used in the analysis and/or interpretation of the infiltration experiments. The core method and the excavation method for measurement of soil bulk density are initially presented. Determination of soil water content by the thermo-gravimetric and the Time Domain Reflectometry methods is then illustrated. Subsequently, field measurement of soil water matric potential by tensiometers is discussed. Laboratory determination of the soil water retention curve by tensiometric and pressiometric techniques is also described. Finally, different methods to test water stability of soil aggregates are illu…