This book includes four parts that are logically connected from data, modeling, data assimilation that integrates data and models to applications. Land data assimilation is the key focus of the book, which encompasses both theoretical and applied aspects with various novel methodologies and applications to the water cycle, carbon cycle, crop monitoring, and yield estimation.

Readers can benefit from a state-of-the-art presentation of the latest tools and their usage for understanding earth system processes. Discussions in the book present and stimulate new challenges and questions facing today's earth science and modeling communities.