Book excerpt: Satellite Soil Moisture Retrieval: Techniques and Applications offers readers a better understanding of the scientific underpinnings, development, and application of soil moisture retrieval techniques and their applications for environmental modeling and management, bringing together a collection of recent developments and rigorous applications of soil moisture retrieval techniques from optical and infrared datasets, such as the universal triangle method, vegetation indices based approaches, empirical models, and microwave techniques, particularly by utilizing earth observation datasets such as IRS III, MODIS, Landsat7, Landsat8, SMOS, AMSR-e, AMSR2 and the upcoming SMAP. Through its coverage of a wide variety of soil moisture retrieval applications, including drought, flood, irrigation scheduling, weather forecasting, climate change, precipitation forecasting, and several others, this is the first book to promote synergistic and multidisciplinary activities among scientists and users working in the hydrometeorological sciences. - Demystifies soil moisture retrieval and prediction - Links soil moisture retrieval techniques with new satellite missions for earth and environmental science oriented problems - Written to be accessible to a wider range of professionals with a common interest in geo-spatial techniques, remote sensing, sustainable water resource development, and earth and environmental issues