NCA-LDAS: Terrestrial Hydrology Trends for the Contiguous U.S., 1980-2015

A suite of historical trends in terrestrial hydrology over the conterminous United States for water years 1980-2015. The dataset provides gridded daily outputs from the Noah 3.3 land surface model at 1/8th degree resolution, forced with NLDAS-2 meteorology and assimilated satellite data. Trends in annual hydrologic indicators are reported using the Mann-Kendall test at p < 0.1 significance.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in soil moisture and snow depth based on assimilated satellite data.
• Modeling changes in terrestrial water and energy balance stores and fluxes over a 35-year period.
• Assessing precipitation trends for climate adaptation and water resource management.
• Supporting the National Climate Assessment with high-resolution, quality-controlled hydrologic products.

Strengths

• Covers a 35-year time series from water years 1980 to 2015.
• Provides high-resolution gridded data at 0.125 x 0.125 degree resolution.
• Incorporates multivariate assimilation of satellite-based soil moisture, snow depth, and irrigation products.
• Trends are calculated using a nonparametric statistical test (Mann-Kendall) at a defined significance level (p < 0.1).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is specific to the conterminous United States, limiting global applicability.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived from land surface hydrologic modeling (Noah 3.3 LSM) with multivariate assimilation of satellite Environmental Data Records.

Time Range

1980-2015 (water years)

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:16:32.097456; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Conterminous United States