fldas-soil-moisture-anomalies·dataset
Global Soil Moisture Anomalies for Drought Monitoring
FLDAS Surface Soil Moisture Anomalies
hydrosphere NASA VEDA COG
In plain English
What it measures. A global map showing where surface soil is wetter or drier than normal, using 40 years of monthly records to flag unusual conditions.
How it's made. Produced by the Famine Early Warning System Network's land model (FLDAS), which blends satellite and weather data to estimate soil moisture at 10 km resolution.
How & where you'd use it. Helps spot emerging droughts early to support food and water security and famine prevention.
What's measured
fldassoilmoistureanomalies
Coverage & cadence
- Time span1982-01-01 → 2023-07-01
- Spatial extent-180, -60, 180, 90
- FormatsCOG
What you can do with it
- Follow rainfall, floods and surface-water extent
- Track soil moisture and the onset of drought
- Monitor lakes, rivers and groundwater storage
Official description
A 10 km global data product with 40 years of monthly soil moisture anomalies for food and water security monitoring from the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) Land Data Assimilation System
Get the data
# NASA VEDA — open STAC API, anonymous (cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs)
from pystac_client import Client
cat = Client.open("https://openveda.cloud/api/stac")
col = cat.get_collection("fldas-soil-moisture-anomalies")
items = list(col.get_items()) # browse the analysis-ready COGs
# open an asset with rioxarray:
# import rioxarray; da = rioxarray.open_rasterio(items[0].assets["cog_default"].href) NASA VEDA is an open STAC catalog — browse and stream the cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs anonymously (no login).
Official links
- Open data source VEDA