Global 70-Meter Downscaled Soil Moisture Estimates from ECOSTRESS

Instantaneous soil moisture data at a 70-meter spatial resolution, projected on a global 0.0006° grid. The dataset is produced by NASA's ECOSTRESS instrument on the International Space Station, which has been collecting data since its launch in June 2018. It provides three primary layers: soil moisture, cloud mask, and water mask, distributed in HDF5 format.

Use Cases

• Modeling crop water stress by analyzing the relationship between the 70-meter soil moisture layer and predictor variables like surface temperature and NDVI.
• Validating land surface models by comparing the downscaled soil moisture estimates against coarser GEOS-5 FP model outputs.
• Assessing drought impact at a field scale by tracking temporal changes in the soil moisture layer across the 52° N to 52° S latitude band.
• Masking non-land areas in analysis by applying the provided cloud and water mask layers to isolate valid soil moisture pixels.

Strengths

• High spatial resolution of 70 meters for detailed soil moisture analysis.
• Global coverage between 52° N and 52° S latitudes.
• Data product integrates multiple predictor variables: surface temperature, NDVI, and albedo.

Limitations

• Contains known data acquisition gaps, including a switch to 3-band mode from May 2019 to April 2023 which affected some input bands.
• Temporal coverage is limited to instantaneous estimates, not continuous time series.
• Spatial coverage excludes polar regions beyond 52 degrees latitude.

Provenance

Source

NASA's ECOSTRESS mission instrument on the International Space Station.

Collection Method

Soil moisture is downscaled using a linear regression model with up-sampled surface temperature, NDVI, and albedo as predictors, bias-corrected with GEOS-5 FP data.

Time Range

Data collection began in June 2018 and is ongoing.

Freshness

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Geography

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