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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Soil Moisture Drives Canopy Water Content Dynamics In The Western U.S., Drew S. Lyons
Soil Moisture Drives Canopy Water Content Dynamics In The Western U.S., Drew S. Lyons
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Drought stress is a major contributing factor to adult tree mortality and limits regeneration across the globe. Drought effects are often studied on a site level, but recent advances in remote sensing allow for observations of plant water status across broader geographic scales. The vegetation optical depth (VOD) derived from satellite sensor microwave backscatter has been shown to be sensitive to canopy water content, and can therefore provide useful information on how plant water status changes over time. We develop an index which quantifies the normalized difference between diurnal VOD retrievals (nVOD) across the western U.S. to determine where plant …
Understanding The Food Water Nexus: Characterizing The Impact Of Climatological Anomalies On Agrosystems, Patrick M. Wurster Jr.
Understanding The Food Water Nexus: Characterizing The Impact Of Climatological Anomalies On Agrosystems, Patrick M. Wurster Jr.
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Climate variability at global and regional scales is escalating with increased atmospheric carbon and is expected to magnify the intensity and duration of meteorological extremes, especially droughts. From the many environmental stresses that diminish crop production (e.g., soil salinity, frost, soil erosion) drought is one of the most prevalent. This study focuses on the sensitivity of three key crops produced in the northwestern United States to climatological anomalies, while controlling for attribution using anomalies in price. The study differs from similar studies in that we focus on variability in production which captures both yield (tonnes/ha) and cropping area (ha), as …