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Full catalog/SV12PLSM
SV12PLSM·v1·dataset

How wet the soil is, field-campaign aircraft data

SMAPVEX12 PALS Soil Moisture Data V001
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level Not provided CSV
In plain English

What it measures. Measurements of how wet the soil was, gathered on the ground during a 2012 field campaign rather than from orbit.

How it's made. Collected by the PALS instrument flown on an aircraft as part of the SMAPVEX12 experiment, which was designed to check and validate satellite soil-moisture readings.

How & where you'd use it. Mainly a reference dataset used to test and calibrate satellite soil-moisture products like SMAP; the abstract gives little additional detail.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › MICROWAVE › BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURELAND SURFACE › LAND USE/LAND COVER › LAND USE/LAND COVER CLASSIFICATIONLAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL CLASSIFICATIONLAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENTLAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL TEMPERATUREBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › PLANT CHARACTERISTICS › VEGETATION WATER CONTENT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2012-06-12 → 2012-07-19
  • Measured byAIRCRAFT (PALS)
  • Processing levelLevel Not provided
  • Spatial extent-98.51, 49.44, -97.85, 49.96
  • FormatsCSV
  • StatusCOMPLETE

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

This data set contains soil moisture data obtained by the Passive Active L-band System (PALS) aircraft instrument. The data were collected as part of SMAPVEX12, the Soil Moisture Active Passive Validation Experiment 2012.

Get the data

sv12plsm_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SV12PLSM",
    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 NSIDC_CPRD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.