Very few soil erosion studies have investigated the effectiveness of conservation tillage (CT)-based agrogeotextiles (AGTs) on rainfed sloping croplands of the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) for intensifying unremunerative double cropping (maize-wheat) to sustainable remunerative triple cropping (maize-pea-wheat). This study assessed surface runoff, soil, and nutrient losses during the rainy season in maize crops to evaluate the impact of eight conservation practices on post-rainy season soil moisture content, productivity, and profitability of the crop rotation, and soil organic carbon (SOC) accumulation over a six-year period (2017–2023) on a 4% sloped natural runoff gauge plots (100 × 20 m2 ). The conservation practices involved a combination of rainfed maize-wheat and rainfed maize-pea-wheat crop rotations, utilizing two thicknesses (5 cm and 10 cm) and two configurations (0.5 m and 1.0 m vertical intervals) of Arundo donax (AD)-agro-geotextiles (AGTs), with comparisons drawn against the standard farmers’ practice of bench terraces (BT). In the treated CT fields, the highest amounts of residues (6.0–7.1 t ha- 1 ) were recycled by applying 5 and 10 cm thick AD-AGTs at a 0.5 m vertical interval (VI). Approximately 1100–1300 mm of rainfall per hectare per year was retained as soil water, and soil erosion decreased by 80–90% in the treated AD-AGT CT fields compared to the non-treated CT fields, which experienced a loss of 8.5 tonnes per hectare per year of soil. In the AD-AGT CT fields, the highest wheat equivalent yields (12.0–13.6 t ha- 1 year- 1 ), profits (2332–2477 US$ ha- 1 year- 1 ), and SOC build-up (1.16–1.20%) were recorded. In the treated fields, an average of 32–108 kg organic carbon, 3–6 kg nitrogen, 1–3 kg of phosphorus, and 8–37 kg potassium per hectare per year were retained, preventing their loss as pollutants through surface runoff water. The research provided scientific evidence indicating that triple cropping of maize-pea-wheat in a pure rainfed condition of IHR can be achieved without compromising wheat yields, provided that farmers apply CT-based AD-AGTs at the appropriate rate and configuration, i.e., emplacement of 5 cm thick biomass @ 1.1 t ha- 1 on a 0.5 m vertical interval. From a sustainable practice point of view, the study proposes a valorization for AD biomass that contains no economic value. Future soil and water conservation research should examine the impacts of AD-AGTs on soil and water conservation across a diverse range of rainfall and field slope conditions.

Spatially customized land management strategies are crucial for mitigating land degradation and fostering effective landscape restoration. A deep understanding of local biophysical conditions ensures that interventions are both contextually relevant and impactful, promoting long-term environmental sustainability and delivering socio-economic benefits to local communities. With this consideration, this report, drawing on data collected through field surveys, GIS, and remote sensing techniques, uses Halaba, Ethiopia, as a case study to highlight the region’s varied biophysical conditions and their implications for the design and planning of sustainable land management (SLM) practices. This document is intended for agricultural and natural resource management professionals involved in the design, planning, implementation, and monitoring of SLM practices.

This paper reviews the current state of high-resolution remotely sensed soil moisture (SM) and evapotranspiration (ET) products and modeling, and the coupling relationship between SM and ET. SM downscaling approaches for satellite passive microwave products leverage advances in artificial intelligence and high-resolution remote sensing using visible, near-infrared, thermal-infrared, and synthetic aperture radar sensors. Remotely sensed ET continues to advance in spatiotemporal resolutions from MODIS to ECOSTRESS to Hydrosat and beyond. These advances enable a new understanding of bio-geo-physical controls and coupled feedback mechanisms between SM and ET reflecting the land cover and land use at field scale (3–30 m, daily). Still, the state-of-the-science products have their challenges and limitations, which we detail across data, retrieval algorithms, and applications. We describe the roles of these data in advancing 10 application areas: drought assessment, food security, precision agriculture, soil salinization, wildfire modeling, dust monitoring, flood forecasting, urban water, energy, and ecosystem management, ecohydrology, and biodiversity conservation. We discuss that future scientific advancement should focus on developing open-access, high- resolution (3–30 m), sub-daily SM and ET products, enabling the evaluation of hydrological processes at finer scales and revolutionizing the societal applications in data-limited regions of the world, especially the Global South for socio-economic development.