Project Number: 1245-13610-028-18
Project Type: Reimbursable

Start Date: Nov 08, 2010
End Date: Sep 30, 2014

Objective:
Our central goal here will be to prepare for the application of measurements obtained from the NASA SMAP mission to a specific ecological forecasting activity – yield and productivity prediction for agricultural and rangeland ecosystems. This preparation will be based on conducting a series of synthetic data assimilation experiments designed to clarify whether SMAP surface soil moisture retrievals can be reliably extrapolated to root-zone depths with sufficient accuracy to add significant skill to end-of-season yield and productivity forecasts.

Approach:
Research will be based on the design and execution of a series of complete end-to-end observing system simulation experiments (OSSE’s) to isolate the added utility of SMAP soil moisture products for agricultural and rangeland forecasting activities. All OSSE experiments will contain three separate components : 1) an algorithm test-bed facility to generate synthetic SMAP soil moisture data products, 2) a data assimilation system to integrate these synthetic products into a multi-layered land surface model, and 3) a crop forecasting system to obtain end-of-season crop yield and rangeland productivity forecasts based the mid-growing season initialization of a crop model with profile soil moisture measurements obtained from a crop growth model.