Tracking Deluge and Drought through Soil Moisture: Part 1
Channel: NASAEarthObservatory
Date: 2022-07-29

From soaked to dry, the variable state of U.S. soils has implications for farmers and crop production. The opposing extremes are detected by NASA satellites. A novel tool—the Soil Moisture Analytics (Crop-CASMA) product—integrates this satellite data into a format that is particularly useful to people. 

Part 1 shows Crop-CASMA data during a period of abundant moisture (March through July 2019): https://youtu.be/niYadxR32Nc

Part 2 shows Crop-CASMA data as drought returned and parched much of the United States (March 2021 through June 2022): https://youtu.be/5UzwHTb9mnE 

Read the full story here: https://go.nasa.gov/3bhHSjU 

NASA Earth Observatory animations by Joshua Stevens, using soil moisture data from Crop Condition and Soil Moisture Analytics (Crop-CASMA). The Crop-CASMA product was developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), George Mason University, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Crop-CASMA integrates measurements from NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite and vegetation indices from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. Story and videos by Kathryn Hansen with information from Rajat Bindlish/NASA GSFC. Music: "Summer" by Benjamin Tisson via Bensound.