NASA WLDAS Project: Western U.S. Land Surface Hydrology for Water Planning

NASA's Western Land Data Assimilation System (WLDAS) provides a long-term record of near-surface hydrology for the western United States. The system uses NASA's Land Information System (LIS) to drive the Noah-MP Land Surface Model, simulating states and fluxes from meteorological inputs. Outputs include soil moisture, snow depth, evapotranspiration, and derived quantities like groundwater recharge.

Use Cases

• Assessing drought conditions based on simulated soil moisture and evapotranspiration data.
• Planning water resources using long-term records of snow water equivalent and groundwater recharge.
• Analyzing land surface energy and water budget processes from modeled states and fluxes.
• Monitoring hydrological anomalies using derived state variable anomalies.

Strengths

• Funded by the NASA Western Water Applications Office and developed at Goddard Space Flight Center, indicating institutional support.
• Leverages advanced land surface modeling and data assimilation capabilities customized for regional stakeholders.
• Uses a specific, documented model version: Noah Multiparameterization (Noah-MP) Land Surface Model version 3.6.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), funded by the NASA Western Water Applications Office.

Collection Method

Model simulation using NASA's Land Information System (LIS) and the Noah-MP LSM, driven by NLDAS-2 meteorological inputs.

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Western United States