SPoRT Land Information System Gridded Soil Moisture Model

North American land surface data from the NASA SPoRT-LIS, a high-resolution gridded model run of the Noah land surface model. The dataset provides a 1929 x 929 grid at 0.03-degree spacing, covering a climatology period from 1981 to 2013 and a real-time production run from April 2015 onward, updated every 6 hours. It is produced by the GHRC DAAC and driven by the North American Land Data Assimilation System.

Use Cases

• Analyzing root zone and surface soil moisture trends across the contiguous United States using the gridded model outputs.
• Validating satellite-derived soil moisture products against a consistent, model-based climatology spanning 1981-2013.
• Initializing numerical weather prediction models with real-time, cycled land surface state variables updated every 6 hours.
• Studying land surface hydrology and drought monitoring through time-series analysis of model-simulated water content.

Strengths

• High spatial resolution with a 1929 x 929 grid at 0.03-degree spacing covering the contiguous United States.
• Long temporal coverage, including a 33-year climatology run (1981-2013) and a near-real-time production run from 2015 to present.
• Frequent update cycle, with the real-time model running in a cycled mode every 6 hours.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov signals its importance and operational use.

Limitations

• Specific column names and the exact data schema are not provided in any source description.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between sources (2026-03-12 and 2023-12-31), creating uncertainty about metadata freshness.
• The dataset size and total row count are unknown across all platforms.

Provenance

Source

GHRC DAAC (Global Hydrology Resource Center Distributed Active Archive Center)

Collection Method

Gridded observations-driven run of the Noah land surface model, driven by the North American Land Data Assimilation System – version 2.

Time Range

1981 to present

Freshness

2026-03-12 23:55:37.184917

Geography

Contiguous United States, spanning -124.925 to -67.085 deg E longitude and 25.075 to 52.915 deg N latitude.