Web service-based SMAP soil moisture data visualization, dissemination and analytics based on vegscape framwork

Timely, frequent, crop vegetation condition information, with complete geospatial coverage acquired throughout the growing season is critical for public and private sector decision making that concerns agricultural policy, production, food security, and food prices. The NASA Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) mission provides such a reliable data source for cropland soil moisture assessment. This paper presents a prototype of an interactive Web service based SMAP soil moisture visualization, dissemination and analytics system for US soil moisture monitoring based on the VegScape framework. This system automatically retrieves and preprocesses SMAP soil moisture data for US cropland soil moisture condition monitoring and assessment. The prototype takes advantage of the VegScape's service oriented architecture and adds a new component for SMAP soil moisture. It reuses existing VegScape visualization, dissemination and analytical functionalities and tools. The prototype inherits the capabilities of interactive map operations, data dissemination, statistical tabulating and charting, comparison analysis, and various Web services.