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NASA SPoRT-LiS Soil Moisture Products

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National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Short-term Prediction and Transition Center (SPoRT)

NASA’s Short-term Prediction and Transition Center – Land Information System (SPoRT-LIS) provides high-resolution (about 3-km) gridded soil moisture products in real-time to support regional and local modeling and improve situational awareness. The LIS soil moisture product is a long-term run of the Noah land surface model (LSM) that began on June 1, 2010, and is updated every 6 hours in real-time. The SPoRT-LIS provides unique, real-time soil moisture information at relatively high resolution (~3 km) compared to other operational sources. SPoRT-LIS is driven by input atmospheric analyses from the NCEP/EMC North American Land Data Assimilation System phase 2 (NLDAS-2) and Stage IV precipitation, and incorporates real-time MODIS-derived vegetation. 

The SPoRT-LIS enables a more complete depiction of sub-county drought conditions in space and time compared to coarse soil observation networks (point sources). Since soil moisture and resulting vegetation/crop health are important factors for drought designations, the LIS 3-km analysis provides added value through the integration of 2-dimensional near real-time QPE (Stage IV) and remotely-sensed MODIS vegetation “greenness."

NASA SPoRT-LIS soil moisture percentiles are available for a variety of depths (up to 200 cm) and use a 1981–2013 soil moisture climatology.

Interactive Map: 0–100 cm Soil Moisture Percentile

0–100 cm Soil Moisture Percentile
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