THE NATIONAL COORDINATED SOIL MOISTURE MONITORING NETWORK: DELIVERING SOIL MOISTURE INFORMATION TO SUPPORT DROUGHT (AND FLOOD) EARLY WARNING

The National Coordinated Soil Moisture Monitoring Network is a multi-institutional cooperative effort to coordinate soil moisture monitoring across the United States to support early warning for extreme events such as drought and flood, as well as to address other public needs. This effort is being led by NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System, in cooperation with the USDA, the USGS, NASA, and other federal and state agencies. In 2021 a national strategy was released that will focus network efforts on such priorities as: developing quality control standards for in situ monitoring, deploying new monitoring stations, and researching best practices for integrating in situ, remotely-sensed, and model-derived data outputs to create useful products. This presentation will discuss progress toward realizing this national "network of networks" and developing associated applications and tools. Recent accomplishments as well as outstanding challenges - both technical and organizational - will be discussed.