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Description

This product contains data derived from permanent in situ soil stations and observations by the Passive Active L-band System (PALS) microwave aircraft instrument. The PALS instrument was mounted to a DC-3 aircraft, which flew six parallel flight lines at an altitude of 3000 m in order to map a study area in South Fork, Iowa, United States. A total of 20 soil stations were distributed throughout this same area.

The soil characteristics included in this data set are volumetric soil moisture, vertically and horizontally polarized brightness temperature, effective soil temperature, effective vegetation temperature, vegetation water content, land cover classification, sand and clay fraction, and volumetric soil moisture uncertainty estimates.

Product Summary

Platforms
AIRCRAFT
Instruments
PALS
Spatial Extent

N: 42.66 S: 42.28 E: -93.21 W: -93.58

Spatial Resolution
500 Meters x 500 Meters
Geographic Region
IOWA
Coordinate System
CARTESIAN
Granule Spatial Representation
GEODETIC
Temporal Extent
2016-05-28 to 2016-08-16
Concept ID
C3284168986-NSIDC_CPRD
Data State
COMPLETE
Number of Files/Granules
12
Processing Level
3
Science Keywords
Brightness Temperature ,
Land Use/Land Cover Classification ,
Soil Moisture/Water Content ,
Soil Temperature ,
Soil Texture ,
Vegetation Water Content

Citation

Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.

Copy Citation

Colliander, A., Misra, S., & Cosh, M. (2019). SMAPVEX16 Iowa PALS Brightness Temperature and Soil Moisture Data, Version 1 [Data set]. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/0DJCHZKY1NVO Date Accessed: 2025-12-14

Documents

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