The soil, vegetation and the lower atmosphere system is characterized by complex patterns, structures and processes that act at various time and space scales. While the exchange of energy, water and carbon is continuous between the different compartments, the pertinent fluxes are strongly heterogeneous and variable in space and time. Therefore, the quantitative prediction of the systems’ behavior constitutes a major challenge to scientists and public policy makers.

We expect that explicit consideration of patterns and structure will lead to a general methodology to better understand and predict interactions of soil-vegetation-atmosphere systems. This requires a multi-disciplinary approach integrating research groups in the field of soil and plant science, remote sensing, geophysics, hydrology, meteorology and mathematics over a wide range of spatiotemporal scales using experimental and theoretical techniques.

We solicit contributions from scientists of all Earth sciences disciplines dealing with soil-vegetation-atmosphere systems over a wide range of scales but with specific focus on the field to the meso-scale. We are particularly interested in studies applying novel experimental and theoretical approaches to characterize patterns and structures of e.g., physiochemical properties, vegetation and soil cover, surface-subsurface hydrologic processes, and processes of the atmospheric boundary layer that influence interactions and mass/momentum/energy fluxes of the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system. Studies concerned with data assimilation frameworks to integrate measured data and models are also of special interest.