ECOSTRESS: Global 70-Meter Downscaled Soil Moisture Estimates

ECOSTRESS Gridded Downscaled Soil Moisture Instantaneous L3 Global 70 m V002 provides instantaneous soil moisture estimates at a 70-meter spatial resolution. The data product is generated by NASA's ECOSTRESS instrument on the International Space Station, using linear regression with surface temperature, NDVI, and albedo, and is projected on a global 0.0006° grid. The dataset contains three layers including soil moisture, cloud mask, and water masks, and was last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling crop water stress and irrigation needs based on high-resolution soil moisture estimates.
• Analyzing land surface thermal properties and vegetation health using the integrated surface temperature and NDVI data.
• Validating and calibrating larger-scale hydrological or climate models with 70-meter resolution soil moisture data.
• Monitoring drought conditions and soil water content for agricultural indicators.

Strengths

• High spatial resolution of 70 meters, downscaled from coarser models.
• Globally snapped grid projection (0.0006°) for consistent geospatial analysis.
• Data product contains three distinct layers: soil moisture, cloud mask, and water mask.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data acquisition experienced known gaps and anomalies between 2018 and 2023, as detailed in the description.
• Row count and total file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing from the ECOSTRESS instrument on the International Space Station, using linear regression downscaling with GEOS-5 FP data.

Time Range

Acquisitions began after the instrument launch on June 29, 2018, with operations ongoing.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 02:51:25.159114; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage between 52° N and 52° S latitudes.