NASA SMAP Soil Moisture

NASA SMAP Soil Moisture

MH Subset Needed

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite providing global soil moisture measurements at 9-36km resolution with 2-3 day revisit. Essential for drought detection, irrigation planning, and crop stress assessment in Maharashtra's rain-fed agricultural belts.

Build an irrigation scheduling advisor for Maharashtra using NASA SMAP satellite soil moisture measurements.
Maharashtra subset not yet extracted. This is a global dataset that contains data covering Maharashtra. A regional subset can be extracted by filtering on geographic coordinates or administrative boundaries.
HomepageDownload

Quick Start

import xarray as xr
# Download from https://nsidc.org/data/smap
print('NASA SMAP Soil Moisture: https://nsidc.org/data/smap')
print('Global soil moisture at 9-36km resolution')
Modality
satellite-imagery
Size
9-36km resolution; 2-3 day revisit; global coverage since April 2015
License
Format
HDF5 / NetCDF
Language
en
Update Frequency
2-3 days
Organization
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Category
agriculture-rural

Schema

FieldTypeDescription
soil_moisturefloatVolumetric soil moisture in cm3/cm3
latitudefloatGrid latitude
longitudefloatGrid longitude
datedateObservation date

Build With This

Create a drought onset detector for Maharashtra using SMAP soil moisture decline as an early warning signal
Develop a water balance model for Maharashtra watersheds using SMAP soil moisture with rainfall and ET data
Build a flood susceptibility updater that adjusts risk based on current soil saturation from SMAP data

AI Use Cases

Drought early warning for Marathwada/VidarbhaRoot-zone soil moisture for crop stress detectionIrrigation scheduling optimizationFlood potential assessmentPMFBY crop insurance claim validation
Last verified: 2026-03-09