Land cover changes ( LCCs ) play an important role in the climate system. Research over recent decades highlights the impacts of these changes on atmospheric temperature, humidity, cloud cover, circulation, and precipitation. These impacts range from the local‐ and regional‐scale to sub‐continental and global‐scale. It has been found that the impacts of regional‐scale LCC in one area may also be manifested in other parts of th...

N ortheast C hina ( NEC ) accounts for about 30% of the nation's maize production in C hina. In the past three decades, maize yields in NEC have increased under changes in climate, cultivar selection and crop management. It is important to investigate the contribution of these changing factors to the historical yield increases to improve our understanding of how we can ensure increased yields in the future. In this study, we u...

Northeast China ( NEC ) is not only one of the major agricultural production areas in China, but it is also the most susceptible to climate variability. This led us to investigate the impact of climate change on maize potential yield and yield gaps in this region, where maize accounts for about 30% of the nation's production. The APSIM ‐Maize model was calibrated and validated for maize phenology and yields. The validated mode...

Soil water is an important parameter in the hydrological balance and is essential for understanding land–surface interactions. While spatial coverage of soil water observations is poor across most of the United States, impedance probes have been used to measure soil water throughout Nebraska in the Automated Weather Data Network (AWDN) since 1999. With 8 years of continuous data at selected sites, we were able to derive a Soil...

The inverse distance weighting (IDW) and spatial regression test (SRT) methods provide data estimates for a station of interest based on the measurements at neighbouring stations. This paper evaluates the performance of the two approaches across the USA in estimating maximum and minimum daily temperature where the estimates are compared to actual measured data. The performance of these approaches was assessed using the coeffic...

This simulation‐based study is an effort to develop design requirements for a hypothetical network of instruments to measure average atmospheric variability over a relatively simple terrain. A dataset of air and soil temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and soil moisture from the vicinity of Lincoln, Nebraska, was used to simulate atmospheric daily measurements (max and min temperature as well as infra‐red surface tempe...

With the widespread use of electronic interfaces in data collection, many networks have increased, or will increase, the sampling rate and add more sensors. The associated increase in data volume will naturally lead to an increased reliance on automatic quality assurance (QA) procedures. The number of data entries flagged for further manual validation can be affected by the choice of confidence intervals in statistically based...

An agricultural drought risk‐assessment model was developed for Nebraska, USA, for corn and soybeans on the basis of variables derived from the standardized precipitation index and crop‐specific drought index using multivariate techniques. This model can be used to assess real‐time agricultural drought risk for specific crops at critical times before and during the growing season by retaining previous, and adding current, weat...

Land‐use and land‐cover change can modify near‐surface atmospheric condition. Mesoscale modelling studies have shown that modification in land use affects near‐surface soil moisture storage and energy balance. Such a study in the Great Plains showed that changes in land use from natural grass to irrigated agriculture enhanced soil water storage in the root zone and increased latent energy flux. This increase in latent energy f...

Agricultural drought is the leading cause for crop failure throughout the world. In the USA, significant impacts of recent droughts on agricultural production indicate the continuing vulnerability of the country to drought. This paper presents a methodology for spatial representation of the agroclimatic component of agricultural drought vulnerability. This methodology was developed as a part of an integrated assessment of drou...