2017 ESA Annual Meeting (August 6 -- 11)

COS 69-3 - A new tool for analysis and visualization of heterogeneous soil moisture data

Tuesday, August 8, 2017: 2:10 PM
B114, Oregon Convention Center
Alison G. Boyer, Environmental Sciences Division & Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN and Rupesh Shrestha, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Background/Question/Methods

Root zone soil moisture (RZSM) is an important constraint on carbon flux, and soil moisture data may help to reduce uncertainties in carbon cycle modeling. Over the last few years, availability of RZSM data has grown considerably, due to the development of new airborne sensor capabilities (e.g. AirMOSS), wider installation of in situ networks (e.g. SoilSCAPE, COSMOS), and launch of the Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) satellite. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC; http://daac.ornl.gov) currently distributes about 0.7TB (8085 files) of RZSM data products. One key challenge that may limit effective utilization of these data is their heterogeneity in terms of (1) spatial footprints (points vs gridded representation), (2) frequency (sub-hourly to daily), (3) sub-surface measurement depths, and (4) methods of measurements (in situ vs remote-sensing).

Results/Conclusions

We have developed an integrated visualization and subsetting platform for RZSM datasets available for North America based on open-source software libraries. Harmonizing these disparate data in a single system not only adds value to the existing data but also facilitates exploratory analysis and data discovery among different groups of stakeholders. In this presentation, we describe the new RZSM data platform (available at https://airmoss.ornl.gov/visualize/ ) and share case studies that leverage the visualization system for real-world science applications.