Assessment of Soil Moisture Data Requirements by the Potential SMAP Data User Community: Review of SMAP Mission User Community

NASA´s Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) mission is planned for launch in October 2014 and will provide global measurements of soil moisture and freeze/thaw state. The project is driven by both basic research and applied science goals. Understanding how application driven end-users will apply SMAP data, prior to the satellite´s launch, is an important goal of NASA´s applied science program and SMAP mission success. Because SMAP data are unique, there are no direct proxy datasets that can be used in research and operational studies to determine how the data will interact with existing processes. The objective of this study is to solicit data requirements, accuracy needs, and current understanding of the SMAP mission from the potential user community. This study showed that the data to be provided by the SMAP mission did substantially meet the user community needs. Although there was a broad distribution of requirements stated, the SMAP mission fit within these requirements.