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NASA Data Power New USDA Soil Moisture Portal People looking to plant crops now have a new planning tool in their toolbox thanks to soil moisture data collected by NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission. Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team By Teresa White, Jane Lee, and Jessica Merzdorf, USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service / NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center In Brief: This tool provides information that will help people track droughts or floods, make plans for when to plant crops, and foreca...

Rajat Bindlish, a research associate in Earth science remote sensing at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the tool provides more thorough spatial coverage and consistency than other soil moisture measurement methods. “Soil moisture is a very important piece of information for agricultural yield and productivity,” said Bindlish. “This will provide a means of using NASA remote sensing data to guide predictions of moisture conditions and water availability. Information on the field conditions is important for agricultural operations.” Some of Crop-CASMA’s pr...

New tool made possible by collaboration between USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service and NASA.