How wet the soil is, early test version (NISAR)
What it measures. An early test estimate of how wet the topsoil is, at about 200 meter resolution, expressed as the volume of water per volume of soil. Areas with thick vegetation, cities, ice, water, or recent rain are flagged and not estimated.
How it's made. Derived from radar backscatter measured by the NISAR satellite (a joint NASA-ISRO mission), provided roughly twice every 12 days as a beta product.
How & where you'd use it. Intended for users to get familiar with the data format and parameters; as a beta release it is explicitly not meant for scientific research yet.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2025-10-01 → ongoing
- Measured byNISAR (L-SAR)
- Processing levelLevel 3
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- FormatsHDF5, XML, YAML
- StatusACTIVE
What you can do with it
- Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
- Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
- Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description
NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) backscatter observations will estimate a global high-resolution soil moisture product (200 m). This product will be provided on average twice every 12 days. The NISAR soil moisture product is expected to have a data latency of 72 hours. The NISAR Level 2 backscatter product has a data latency of 48 hours. Soil moisture estimates will be provided over areas with dense vegetation (vegetation water content greater than 5 kg/m2) but will be flagged during retrieval. Areas with urban build-up, permanent snow and ice cover, and permanent inland water bodies will be flagged, and no soil moisture retrieval will be performed. No soil moisture retrieval will be performed over areas with excessive precipitation, frozen ground, or areas with snow on the ground. The NISAR soil moisture product will have an accuracy goal of 0.06 m3/m3 over unflagged areas with vegetation water content below 5 kg/m2. The 5+5 MHz product will be aggregated to 400 meters, but is still on the 200m EASE-Grid. The products in this collection are considered Beta products and are intended to enable users to gain familiarity with the parameters and the data formats. Beta products are not intended for use in scientific research.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="NISAR_L3_SME2_BETA_V1",
version="1",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from ASFBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.