ECOSTRESS: Global Plant Water Stress Index at 70 Meter Resolution

ECOSTRESS data from the International Space Station measures plant temperature and water stress globally between 52° N and 52° S latitudes. The Level 4 product uses the PT-JPL-SM model to generate instantaneous estimates of actual and potential evapotranspiration at a 70-meter spatial resolution. This Version 2 data product is provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is available in Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF format.

Use Cases

• Modeling agricultural drought risk based on the Evaporative Stress Index (ESI) layer.
• Analyzing regional water consumption by vegetation based on actual evapotranspiration (ET) estimates.
• Monitoring ecosystem health and plant stress responses based on the ratio of actual ET to potential ET.
• Creating high-resolution (70 m) global maps of plant water use efficiency based on the PET and ET layers.

Strengths

• Provides a high spatial resolution of 70 meters for detailed regional analysis.
• Covers a broad geographic range between 52° N and 52° S latitudes.
• Data is structured in a standardized, cloud-optimized GeoTIFF (COG) format for efficient access.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Data acquisition experienced gaps and anomalies, notably from May 15, 2019, through April 28, 2023, where only specific thermal bands were downloaded.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Collection Method

Satellite measurements from the ECOSTRESS instrument on the International Space Station, processed using the PT-JPL-SM model.

Time Range

Acquisitions began after launch on June 29, 2018, with operations continuing post-anomaly resolutions.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 02:50:37.577350; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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