2025 National Soil Moisture Workshop
About the Workshop
Held June 3-5, 2025 at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, the 16th annual National Soil Moisture Workshop explored the theme "Making Soil Moisture Science Actionable." The workshop was hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service and NOAA's National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and Colorado State University. Participants came from across the U.S., including Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and represented universities, soil moisture networks, federal and state agencies, and private industry.
Workshop presentations included targeted sensor applications for agriculture, improvements to modeled soil moisture, data assimilation or machine learning for improving forecasting models, developments in public-facing maps and tools, and relationships between soil moisture and resource management or hazard mitigation planning. View the workshop agenda.
Video recordings of the workshop presentations will be available on this page soon. Learn more about the national and regional research supported by the NCSMMN.
For a general overview of activities and priorities of the NCSMMN, see this article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: "Working Toward a National Coordinated Soil Moisture Monitoring Network: Vision, Progress, and Future Directions."
This year, the workshop also included:
A pre-workshop meeting covering Operations and Maintenance Challenges for Soil Moisture Networks. This discussion-based session included identification of key components of successful network viability and identification of challenges to demonstrating network value and securing funding.
Two field trip options covering different aspects of operational applications of soil moisture information. One field trip up the Poudre Canyon included talks on national forest management from Arapaho Roosevelt National Forest , post-wildfire restoration from the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed, and expansion of soil moisture data collection at RAWS stations from Colorado State University. The other trip provided a water management perspective from Northern Water at their Berthoud campus and from City of Fort Collins Water Utility at Horsetooth Reservoir.
2025 Soil Moisture Community Leadership Award Recipient: Dr. Todd Caldwell
At this event, the workshop organizing committee and the NCSMMN Coordinating Team awarded Dr. Todd Caldwell the 2025 Soil Moisture Community Leadership Award in recognition of his many contributions to the community. Dr. Caldwell has actively engaged with national coordinated soil moisture monitoring efforts since the network’s inception. He has been a consistent chair of soil moisture-focused sessions at numerous scientific meetings, often serving as the source of new initiatives and collaborations for soil moisture science.
Dr. Caldwell contributed significantly to the development of the NCSMMN Strategy and the Soil Moisture Data Quality Guidance document recently published by NCSMMN. He has also been recognized for his contributions to the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission. He was one of the founding organizers of the National Soil Moisture website, and during his time at the U.S. Geological Survey, he helped pioneer dissemination and testing of new technologies such as cosmic ray neutron sensors.
Overall, Dr. Caldwell has been an outstanding member of the soil moisture community with a breadth and depth of knowledge which helps raise the visibility and profile of soil moisture science and positively impact society.
The Soil Moisture Community Leadership Award is presented annually at the National Soil Moisture Workshop to the individual, either research- or practitioner-oriented, who demonstrates an extraordinary commitment to building the soil moisture community of practice and delivering soil moisture–related products and services to support the public good.
For more information, please contact Elise Osenga (elise.osenga@noaa.gov).
