We designed an index-based insurance (IBI) for drought and flood in rice crops in Babahoyo (Ecuador). We assessed Babahoyo's soil, climatic and topographic variability, finding two homogeneous zones inside this area. We set differentiated insurance premiums according to the particular risk status of each zone. Results demonstrate that this IBI is an efficient risk transfer tool for policyholders. This insurance design could contribute to stabilizing farmers' incomes and rice production.

A new combined drought indicator (CDI) is proposed that integrates rainfall, soil moisture and vegetation dynamics. The performance of this indicator was evaluated against crop damage data from agricultural insurance schemes in five different areas in SW Spain. Results show that this indicator was able to predict important droughts in 2004–2005 and 2011–2012, marked by crop damage of between 70 % and 95 % of the total insured area. This opens important applications for improving insurance schemes.

Vegetation indices based on satellite images, such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), have been used for damaged pasture insurance. The occurrence of damage is usually defined by NDVI thresholds mainly based on normal statistics. In this work a pasture area in Spain was delimited by MODIS images. A statistical analysis of NDVI was applied to search for alternative distributions. Results show that generalized extreme value distributions present a better fit than normal ones.

NDVI and EVI vegetation indexes, estimated from satellite images, can been used to estimate root zone soil moisture. However, depending on the spatial and radiometric resolution of the sensors used, estimations could change. In this work, images taken by satellites IKONOS-2 and LANDSAT-7 of the same location are compared on the four bands involved in these vegetation indexes. The results show that spatial resolution has a similar scaling effect in the four bands, but not radiometric resolution.

Melon crop got different levels of N that constituted a contribution to the variation of soil N at mainly larger scales. During its development a proportion of the N was taken up, adding a second factor of variability at smaller scales. After the melon harvest, the wheat was sown across the plots and harvested at the end of the season. Wheat was used as a N sink crop and allowed us to evaluate the soil N residual. Multiscale and relative entropy were applied to study N scale dependencies.

The focus of this paper is to improve our studies related to the novel use of the Thorpe method applied to atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) using new data from Spanish field experiments. We analyse the time behaviour of the maximum Thorpe displacement (d_T)_max and the Thorpe-scale L_T during a day cycle. We also analyse the relation between (d_T)_max and L_T. We deduce that they confirm a power law statistically significant, with differences between convective conditions and shear-driven conditions.