SMIPS: Australia-Wide Daily Soil Moisture Estimates at 1km Resolution

The Soil Moisture Integration and Prediction System (SMIPS) produces national daily volumetric soil moisture estimates for Australia at approximately 1km resolution. SMIPS uses a two-layer soil model parameterized with physical properties from the Soil and Landscape Grid of Australia and is forced with precipitation and evapotranspiration data from the Bureau of Meteorology. Model states are adjusted using observational data from the European Space Agency's SMOS satellite mission.

Use Cases

• Modeling agricultural drought risk based on daily soil moisture index values.
• Analyzing spatial patterns of soil water storage based on the 90cm soil moisture store index.
• Validating hydrological models using the data-fusion approach combining satellite and ground-based data.
• Monitoring environmental water availability based on the shallow and deep soil moisture stores.

Strengths

• Provides national coverage for the entire continent of Australia.
• Offers daily temporal resolution and approximately 1km spatial resolution.
• Integrates multiple data sources including satellite observations (SMOS) and Bureau of Meteorology models.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• An experimental model version uses precipitation data from a research product, which may affect stability.

Provenance

Source

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery

Collection Method

Data model fusion approach using the Soil Moisture Integration and Prediction System (SMIPS), parameterized with the Soil and Landscape Grid of Australia and forced with Bureau of Meteorology data.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-10 20:18:59.152207; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia