Model-Based Monitoring of Soil Moisture Dynamics in Agriculture

Dear Colleagues,

Soil moisture plays a key role in almost every growth stage of agricultural plants, including germination, sprouting, seeding, vegetating, budding, flowering, and ripening. In-suit soil moisture sensors can continuously measure soil moisture at various depths with very high accuracy. However, the costs associated with in-suit soil moisture monitoring including installation, operation, and maintenance in agricultural fields are high, and spatial coverage is usually limited. Tremendous progress has been made in the airborne and spaceborne remote sensing of soil moisture, which is effective, efficient, and less expensive. However, at the current stage of development, it is very difficult to continuously monitor soil moisture from air or space, and remote sensing techniques are only effective in measuring soil moisture in the top thin soil layer (2–5 cm). Numerical simulation is an important approach for monitoring and understating soil moisture dynamics in agricultural fields, and it allows all limitations associated with in-suit, airborne, or spaceborne soil moisture monitoring to be overcome. Therefore, to report the progress made in the model-based monitoring of soil moisture dynamics in agriculture, this Special Issue solicits papers on the latest scientific findings and advances in numerical simulations of soil moisture in agriculture fields at different scales (e.g., point, plot, field, catchment, and watershed) and in the different growth stages of agricultural plants.

Prof. Dr. Feifei Pan
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• soils
• soil moisture
• sensors
• numerical simulation
• remote sensing