NASA SUSMAP: SMAP observations to trace the lifecycle of hydrologic extreme events

Project Leader:John Reager (NASA JPL)

Project Details SMAP is a remote sensing observatory that carries two instruments that will map soil moisture and determine the freeze or thaw state of the same area being mapped.

This project is a collaboration with scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to explore the temporal and spatial domain of flood events and their impacts, encompassing both terrestrial and oceanic regions. The primary objective of the work will be to understand the mechanisms of flood generation and progression, and to characterize the contributors to land and ocean event severity. The secondary objective will be to examine if flood-driven ocean productivity events can be modeled and predicted with significant lead-time (~2-3 weeks) to offer utility in operational fisheries management as well as assess the quality of satellite-derived sea surface salinity and to potentially develop improved algorithms for determining SSS.

The proposal team consists of expertise in the study of hydrologic extreme events, in ocean salinity remote sensing, in numerical river modeling, and in the study of coastal marine ecosystems.