Near-Real-Time Integration of Soil State Information

The Army requires the development of models for improving the state-of-the-art understanding of soil state characteristics in regions with varying observational input datasets. Currently, weather-scale remote sensing, mesoscale standoff sensing, and point-scale in situ sensing provide approximate measurements of near-surface soil moisture at different scales and extents of coverage. In addition, soil moisture downscaling models can be applied to weather-scale land surface models to estimate soil moisture at a variety of tactical scales. However, the Army’s exploitation of these disparate data sources is greatly hindered due to the difficulty in integrating these data in a timely manner for applications in sensor and model development and validation, mobility analyses, and decision support. Creare proposes to address this Army need by developing a modular, high-performance observational data processing framework. This framework will enable Army geospatial analysts and researchers to automatically ingest, fuse, process, visualize, and disseminate multi-scale, multi-source soil moisture data products.