Satellite data provide global observations of many of the earth's system processes and features. These data are valuable for developing scientific products that increase our understanding of how the earth's systems are integrated. The water, energy and carbon cycle exchanges between the land and atmosphere are linked by soil moisture. NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission provides soil moisture and freeze/thaw measurements from space and allows scientiscts to link the water energy and carbon cycles. In order for SMAP data to be best integrated into decision support systems, the mission has engaged with the stakeholder community since 2009 and has attempted to scale the utility of the data to the thematic societal impacts of the satellite product applications. The SMAP Mission, which launched on January 31, 2015, has actively grown an Early Adopter (EA) community as part of it's applications effort and worked with these EAs to demonstrate a scaled thematic impact of SMAP data product in societally relevant decision support applications. The SMAP mission provides global observations of the Earth's surface soil moisture, providing high accuracy, resolution and continuous global coverage. Through the Early Adopters Program, the SMAP Applications Team will spend the next 2 years after launch documenting and evaluating the use of SMAP science products in applications related to weather forecasting, drought, agriculture productivity, floods, human health and national security.
['Vanessa Escobar', 'S. Delgado Arias', 'M. S. Moran', 'Grey Nearing', 'Dara Entekhabi', 'Eni G. Njoku', 'Simon H. Yueh', 'Bradley Doorn', 'R. H. Reichle']
Overview of the SMAP Applications and the SMAP Early Adopters program - NASA's first mission-directed outreach effort