Operational land-surface-model output: soil moisture, snow water equivalent, evapotranspiration, runoff. Drives NASA Hydrology Copilot + USGS hydrology applications.

NASA Land Information System (LIS) Hydrology Outputs

Operational land-surface-model output: soil moisture, snow water equivalent, evapotranspiration, runoff. Drives NASA Hydrology Copilot + USGS hydrology applications.

Access

Python (earthaccess): search 'LIS_' keyword
Portal: https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/centers/ghrc-daac
Mission portal: https://lis.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Gotchas

Many model configurations; pick the right one for your AOI
Model output, not direct observation — biases inherit from forcing data
Often used as ground truth for downstream ML models

Other datasets: d033, d034

Sources

https://lis.gsfc.nasa.gov/

The access details, code, and sources below are kept in the original English for technical accuracy.

Quick access (cloud-direct)

lis_access.py

import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="LIS_*",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream from GHRC DAAC

Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.

A computed picture of land water