Welcome to the International Soil Moisture Network
The International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) is a collaborative initiative aimed at establishing and maintaining a global in situ soil moisture database. This database serves as a vital resource for validating and enhancing global satellite products, as well as improving land surface, climate and hydrological models.
Soil moisture, which is the water stored in the upper soil layer, plays a pivotal role in numerous processes and applications. These include numerical weather prediction, flood forecasting, agricultural drought assessment, water resource management, greenhouse gas accounting, civil protection, and epidemiological modeling of water-borne diseases. The societal benefits of the ISMN are therefore extensive.
The ISMN was initially developed by the TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology) Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation - Climate and Environmental Remote Sensing Research Unit (CLIMERS). Since 2022, it has been jointly hosted and managed by the International Centre for Water Resources and Global Change (ICWRGC) and the Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) in Germany.
The ISMN represents a collaborative effort supported by multiple international organisations, including the Global Energy and Water Exchanges Project (GEWEX), the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), the Global Climate Observing System - Terrestrial Observation Panel for Climate (GCOS-TOPC), the Group of Earth Observation (GEO), and the Global Terrestrial Network on Hydrology (GTN-H). Its establishment and operation was made possible through financial support of the Earth Observation Programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the many voluntary contributions of scientists and networks worldwide.
Latest News
