Soil Water Content
Soil water content is the amount of water between the soil surface and the groundwater level in the unsaturated zone. This ratio of water volume to soil volume is crucial for understanding soil health, hydrological processes, and drought conditions.
Planet's Soil Water Content (SWC) product offers near-daily measurements with spatial resolutions of 100 m and 1000 m. Based on passive microwave observations, our data is consistent across time and space, strongly correlating with ground data and accurately reflecting weather patterns. This makes it a cost-effective and low-effort alternative to physical soil water content sensors.
Use Cases
Agriculture - You can use SWC data to develop models that assess field conditions, enabling more informed decisions about irrigation and field operations. The data is also used to make yield and crop quality predictions at both regional and field scales.
Drought Monitoring - Tracking conditions over years and decades, SWC data provides a baseline understanding of normal and abnormal conditions for any given region. Leading reinsurers and brokers use the data in more than 20 countries to help protect farmers from drought impacts.
Water Resource Management - Near real-time SWC data aids in monitoring complex water systems by offering insights into water demand and storage capacity. With over two decades of archive data, water resource managers can track droughts, measure soil saturation, and assess intervention effects.
Natural Disaster Risk Assessment - Models incorporating vegetation, weather, and SWC data offer detailed insights into risks for wildfires, floods, and other natural disasters. The data also helps evaluate the impact of ecosystem restoration projects. Compared to in-situ sensors, SWC data provides a cost-effective and less labor-intensive method for risk assessment and remediation tracking.
API Access Information
| API | Available | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Data API | ❌ | |
| Orders API | ❌ | |
| Subscriptions API | ✅ |
Subscriptions Access
Soil Water Content 100m
Soil Water Content 1000m
For more information on the Subscriptions API and code samples, see the API documentation.
Learn More
Planet University
Learn the SWC basics with this introduction course.
Blog posts
Read the latest SWC news and stories.
Subscriptions API
Get started with the Subscriptions API.
Jupyter Notebooks
Access SWC and create visualizations with this tutorial.
EvalScripts
Visualize SWC and extract insights with EvalScripts.