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Data Assimilation and Modeling for Sustainable Soil–Water Systems

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Soil and Water".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2026 | Viewed by 1061

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. College of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Ludong University, Yantai 264025, China
2. College of Natural Resources and Environment, Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, Yangling 712100, China
Interests: soil hydrology; agrohydrology; critical zone science; modeling
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State Key Laboratory of Ecological Safety and Sustainable Development in Arid Lands, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China
Interests: ecohydrology; restoration ecology; water resouces and cycling in drylands
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Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt
Interests: agricultrual engineering; water resources; climate change research; hydrological modeling; soil and water conservation; GIS and RS applications

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Guest Editor
Department of Soil Science, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706-1299, USA
Interests: remote sensing; proximal soil sensing; machine learning; soil process modeling
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Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences; Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
Interests: human–water systems (sociohydrology); agent-based modeling; data science and machine learning; water system modeling; digital twins for water systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable soil and water management increasingly relies on the integration of models with multi-scale observations. This Special Issue explores the application of data assimilation and modeling in soil and water systems across natural and agricultural landscapes. Achieving this integration demands model-centric data assimilation frameworks capable of fusing in situ and remote sensing observations—such as satellite-based evapotranspiration and soil moisture, geophysical surveys (e.g., EMI), cosmic-ray neutron sensing, and lysimeter and hydrograph records—with crop–vadose–groundwater models.

We welcome contributions on digital twins for farms and irrigation districts, uncertainty quantification in soil water models, tracer-aided modeling to partition evaporation and transpiration, agent-based models that simulate stakeholder decision-making, and predict-then-verify frameworks for adaptive management. This Special Issue encourages interdisciplinary submissions that bridge hydrology, soil science, agronomy, and socio-environmental systems, and will highlight case studies that demonstrate the value of integrated modeling for resilience, drought adaptation, and policy evaluation.

Prof. Dr. Ying Zhao
Dr. Jie Xue
Dr. Ali Mokhtar
Dr. Jingyi Huang
Dr. Yao Hu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.

Keywords

  • data assimilation
  • digital twin
  • hydrological modeling
  • soil moisture
  • crop–vadose–aquifer interaction
  • remote sensing
  • climate resilience
  • tracer-based partitioning

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

35 pages, 819 KB  
Review
Data Assimilation and Modeling Frontiers in Soil–Water Systems
by Ying Zhao
Water 2026, 18(4), 440; https://doi.org/10.3390/w18040440 - 7 Feb 2026
Viewed by 810
Abstract
Sustainable soil–water management under climate and socio-economic pressures requires predictive capability that is both mechanistic and continuously corrected by observations. Data assimilation (DA) provides the formal machinery to merge models with heterogeneous measurements—from satellite evapotranspiration and soil moisture to cosmic-ray neutron sensing, proximal [...] Read more.
Sustainable soil–water management under climate and socio-economic pressures requires predictive capability that is both mechanistic and continuously corrected by observations. Data assimilation (DA) provides the formal machinery to merge models with heterogeneous measurements—from satellite evapotranspiration and soil moisture to cosmic-ray neutron sensing, proximal geophysics, lysimeters, and groundwater hydrographs—while propagating uncertainty. This review (based on 90 references) synthesizes frontiers in DA and modeling for soil–water systems across scales, emphasizing (i) multi-source observation operators and scaling; (ii) coupled crop–vadose–groundwater modeling frameworks and their structural hypotheses; (iii) modern DA methods (ensemble, variational, particle-based, and hybrid physics–ML) for joint estimation of states, parameters, and biases; and (iv) emerging digital twins that enable predict-then-verify management loops for irrigation, recharge enhancement, and drought risk reduction. We highlight how tracer-aided and isotope-informed components can improve evapotranspiration partitioning and recharge threshold detection, and how agent-based or socio-hydrological coupling can represent human decision feedback. Finally, we outline research gaps in uncertainty quantification, benchmarking, reproducibility, and governance needed to operationalize trustworthy soil–water digital twins for resilient food and water systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Data Assimilation and Modeling for Sustainable Soil–Water Systems)
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