Screening variability and change of soil moisture under wide-ranging climate conditions : Snow dynamics effects

Acknowledgments This work has been supported by the Stockholm University strategic environmental research program Ekoklim and The Swedish Research Council Formas (project 2012-790).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Screening long-term variability and change of soil moisture in a changing climate

Acknowledgments We acknowledge support for this work from the Swedish Research Council (VR; Project Number 2009-3221), and the strategic research program Ekoklim at Stockholm University.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Data-model comparison of temporal variability in long-term time series of large-scale soil moisture

Acknowledgments This work has been supported by the Swedish University strategic environmental research program Ekoklim and the Swedish Research Council Formas (project 2012-790). The soil moisture data were downloaded from the Ameriflux website: funding for AmeriFlux data resources was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. GPCC Precipitation data, GHCN Gridded V2 data, NARR data, and CPC US Unified Precipitation data were obtained from the Web site of NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Détermination d'un modèle d'humidité du sol pour le mil

Plus que partout ailleurs dans le monde, l’agriculture est un enjeu vital en Afrique de l’Ouest. Elle fait travailler un nourrit une grande partie de la population. Mais les récoltes sont dépendantes d’un climat très variable, et le manque de données et de moyen est un frein au développement de l’agriculture. En proposant des outils d’information simples, sur la base des réseaux de capteurs sans fil pour les populations rurales et les organismes locaux, on peut contribuer à améliorer ce secteur. C’est dans cette optique que la prévision de l’état de santé du mil, principale culture vivrière, pourrait permettre une appropriation de l’environnement, une meilleure connaissance et donc aiderait à la décision. Pour modéliser l’état de santé du mil, il faut avant tout pouvoir modéliser l’évolution de l’humidité du sol. C’est ici l’objectif de ce travail, effectué sur la base de mesures directes dans des champs de mil au village de Tambarga, Burkina Faso. A long terme, et en apportant des installations complémentaires (petite retenue d’eau), les populations locales devraient pouvoir décider d’apporter de l’eau à leurs cultures, afin d’assurer leur récolte malgré des périodes de sécheresse, tout en gérant de façon durable les ressources naturelles

Opportunities and challenges in using catchment-scale storage estimates from cosmic ray neutron sensors for rainfall-runoff modelling

Acknowledgements We thank the Macaulay Development Trust and School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen for KDPs scholarship. JG would like to acknowledge funding from the Royal Society and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland (project 70112). JG and LV acknowledge funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (project NE/N007611/1 and CC13_080). MW was supported by the Rural & Environment Science & Analytical Services Division of the Scottish Government. RR received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (projects NE/M003086/1, NE/R004897/1 and NE/T005645/1) and from the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations (IAEA/UN) (project CRP D12014). Special thanks to Carol Taylor, Jessica Fennell, Alice Poli and many more for assistance with fieldwork. Finally, we would like to acknowledge Kenneth Loades for providing us with essential equipment for soil sampling and thank David Finlay and his team for enabling land access in Elsick.Peer reviewedPostprin

Importance of short-term temporal variability in soil physical properties for soil water modelling under different tillage practices

Acknowledgements This study was part of the Red Soils CZO and MIDST-CZ projects funded by the National Environment Research Council (grants NE/N007611/1 and NE/S009167/1) and the National Sciences Foundation of China (NSFC: 41571130051, 41571130053, 41371235). The 596 experiments in Scotland had financial support from the Rural & Environment Science & Analytical Services Division of the Scottish Government.Peer reviewedPostprin

Two Cases of Pulmonary Tuberculosis Caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis subsp. canetti

We identified an unusual strain of mycobacteria from two patients with pulmonary tuberculosis by its smooth, glossy morphotype and, primarily, its genotypic characteristics. Spoligotyping and restriction fragment length polymorphism typing were carried out with the insertion sequence IS6110 patterns. All known cases of tuberculosis caused by Mycobacterium canetti have been contracted in the Horn of Africa

A Simple Modelling Framework for Shallow Subsurface Water Storage and Flow

Water storage and flow in shallow subsurface drives runoff generation, vegetation water use and nutrient cycling. Modelling these processes under non-steady state conditions is challenging, particularly in regions like the subtropics that experience extreme wet and dry periods. At the catchment-scale, physically-based equations (e.g., Richards equation) are impractical due to their complexity, while conceptual models typically rely on steady state assumptions not found in daily hydrological dynamics. We addressed this by developing a simple modelling framework for shallow subsurface water dynamics based on physical relationships and a proxy parameter for the fluxes induced by non-unit hydraulic gradients. We demonstrate its applicability for six generic soil textures and for an Acrisol in subtropical China. Results showed that our new approach represents top soil daily fluxes and storage better than, and as fast as, standard conceptual approaches. Moreover, it was less complex and up to two orders of magnitude faster than simulating Richards equation, making it easy to include in existing hydrological models