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Soil Moisture Webinar Series—Soil Moisture 101: What It Means and How It's Measured
The National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and the National Weather Service (NWS) are hosting two webinars on soil moisture data and applications. These webinars are intended to help NWS operational forecasters and other weather & climate service providers better understand soil moisture monitoring and its practical applications.
The first webinar, held on February 22, provided an overview of soil moisture monitoring and interpretation, including a review of the three main techniques for estimating soil moisture conditions: in situ ground-based systems, satellite measurements, and land surface model outputs. The second webinar, held on March 29, will feature presentations from climate service professionals on how soil moisture informs their decision making.
This first webinar, "Soil Moisture 101: What It Means and How It's Measured," included a series of brief recorded presentations to provide an overall background on soil moisture monitoring, followed by live Q&A with the presenters:
- “Overview of Soil Moisture Monitoring” - Mike Cosh, USDA Agricultural Research Service
- “In situ Soil Moisture Data and Products” - Chris Fiebrich, Oklahoma Mesonet
- “Satellite-based Remote Sensing of Soil Moisture” - John Bolten, NASA Goddard
- “Model-output Soil Moisture Data and Products” - Marina Skumanich, NIDIS
This webinar series is sponsored in part by the National Coordinated Soil Moisture Monitoring Network. For more information, please email Marina Skumanich (marina.skumanich@noaa.gov).