Views from the ground and from space are helping scientists understand how soil moisture affects U.S. agriculture.
Published Nov 25, 2015
The Aquarius instrument was designed to study ocean salinity, but it is also making an important contribution to studies of the water cycle on land.
Published Jul 15, 2014
An extreme rainfall event saturated the soil along the U.S. East Coast.
Published Oct 8, 2015
The amount of water contained in the top few centimeters of soil is small on a global scale, but it is critical for agriculture analysts trying to monitor commodity production and humanitarian need.
Published Jun 2, 2018
The proportion of sand, silt, and clay contained in soil across the U.S. affects the amount of water it can hold.
Published Jan 9, 2016
Harvey dropped buckets of rain on areas that were already very dry or very wet.
Published Aug 31, 2017
The SMAP mission lifts off to make the most accurate, high-resolution soil moisture measurements ever collected from space.
Published Feb 1, 2015
Eastern Australia has been hit particularly hard by drought, taking a toll on the region’s soil moisture and agriculture.
Published Aug 9, 2018Image of the Day Land Water Drought Human Presence Remote Sensing
Scientists have developed a new way to measure water cycle intensity over time.
Published Jul 26, 2019
The GRACE satellites can detect the movement and depletion of water supplies at and below Earth’s surface.
Published Sep 20, 2012
Nearly all fresh water at Earth’s highest northern latitudes is frozen. But just a short distance to the south, the landscape comes alive each year after the spring thaw.
Published Jan 2, 2016
A new map reveals the extreme depletion of groundwater in Texas and other parts of the southern United States due to drought.
Published Dec 1, 2011
Twin satellites are assessing the state of soil moisture and groundwater on the continent and around the world.
Published Apr 6, 2020
Though a series of winter storms provided some relief, a pair of satellites operated by NASA shows that groundwater supplies remained unusually low in many parts of the country.
Published Jan 19, 2013
Long-term rainfall deficits, heat waves, and increased evaporation have depleted some of the groundwater supply beneath central and eastern Europe.
Published Jun 25, 2020
Earth is a water planet. Three-quarters of the planet’s surface covered by ice or oceans, and the sky is filled with clouds.
Published Oct 2, 2010
An arid region grew even drier between 2003 and 2009 due to human consumption of water for drinking and agriculture.
Published Mar 13, 2013
These images show how terrestrial water storage in the four major sub-basins of the United States’ Mississippi River basin differed from average in January and July 2005.
Published Jan 26, 2007
