NASA SMAPVEX16 Manitoba: In Situ Soil and Crop Measurements for Satellite Validation

NASA's SMAPVEX16 Manitoba Project data set contains in situ measurements collected for a satellite validation campaign in Manitoba. The collection includes soil moisture, bulk density, crop metrics, land cover, Leaf Area Index, meteorological data, brightness temperatures, soil texture, and surface roughness. Data are hosted on AWS and require an Earthdata Login account for access.

Use Cases

• Validate satellite soil moisture retrievals based on in situ soil moisture and temperature measurements.
• Model crop growth and biomass based on crop density, height, and Leaf Area Index (LAI) data.
• Analyze the relationship between soil properties and microwave emissions based on soil texture, bulk density, and brightness temperature data.
• Study local meteorological influences on soil conditions based on the included meteorological data.

Strengths

• Data covers multiple interrelated agricultural and environmental variables, including soil, crop, and atmospheric measurements.
• Collection is designed for the specific purpose of validating a major NASA satellite mission (SMAP), indicating a controlled experimental context.
• Data is provided under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NASA

Collection Method

In situ measurements collected for the Soil Moisture Active Passive Validation Experiment 2016 Manitoba (SMAPVEX16 Manitoba) campaign.

Time Range

2016

Freshness

unknown

Geography

Manitoba, Canada