SMAP Stories
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Great Air Quality for the Great Lakes Region
Air quality planning agencies in the U.S. Great Lakes region now include high-resolution NASA satellite data and near real-time Earth observations in their ozone pollution assessments. Creating models that accurately predict the complex lake and land breezes along Lake Michigan’s…
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Drought Makes its Home on the Range
As Tracy Schohr goes about her day, water is always on her mind. She’s thinking of it as she rides an all-terrain vehicle around the pasture, looks up hay prices and weather forecasts, and collects data on grazing and invasive…
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NASA Watches Water to Help Grow our Groceries
Every day – up to thirty times a day, in fact – one of Mark Mason’s employees at Nature’s Reward Farms in Monterey County, California brings him the results of a soil test for discussion. Mason supervises fertilizer and irrigation…
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From Seed to Market: NASA Brings Food to the Table
As the seasons turn from spring, to summer, to fall – farmers plant crops, monitor their growth and harvest them. And now increasingly they are using NASA Earth science data to help make their decisions. While NASA satellites primarily support…
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Machine Learning Model Doubles Accuracy of Global Landslide ‘Nowcasts’
Every year, landslides – the movement of rock, soil, and debris down a slope – cause thousands of deaths, billions of dollars in damages, and disruptions to roads and power lines. Because terrain, characteristics of the rocks and soil, weather,…
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NASA Data Powers New USDA Soil Moisture Portal
Farmers, researchers, meteorologists and others now have access to high-resolution NASA data on soil moisture, thanks to a new tool developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) in collaboration with NASA and George Mason…
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NASA Probes Environment, COVID-19 Impacts, Possible Links
Scientists are using information from NASA’s Earth-observing satellites, on-the-ground sensors and computer-based datasets to study the environmental, economic and societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the agency’s Earth Science Division recently sponsored new projects to examine how the…
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When It Comes to Water, You Have to Think Global
Earth is a pale, blue dot when seen from space. Its blue color is due to our home planet being 71% covered in water. NASA monitors Earth’s water from space, the skies, ground stations on land, ships sailing the seas…
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NASA Study Adds a Pinch of Salt to El Niño Models
When modeling the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) ocean-climate cycle, adding satellite sea surface salinity — or saltiness — data significantly improves model accuracy, according to a new NASA study. ENSO is an irregular cycle of warm and cold climate events…
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NASA Soil Data Join the Air Force
SMAP satellite soil moisture measurements now increase the accuracy of Army and Air Force weather forecasts and advisories.