Evapotranspiration over San Joaquin Valley

The Central Valley, CA is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the United States and the world. As California is in a continuing drought, it is important to monitor agricultural plant life to ensure maximized productivity. ECOSTRESS has the ability to monitor Evapotranspiration over agricultural fields. This Evapotranspiration image on the right was captured on June 09, 2022 at 06:12 PM PDT. The image on the left was captured by ECOSTRESS on June 15, 2022 at 08:27 AM PDT. Blue indicates high water use while brown indicates dry conditions.

ECOSTRESS is a thermal instrument on the International Space Station that measures the temperature of the ground, which is hotter than the air temperature during the day. It was launched to the space station in 2018. Its primary mission is to identify critical thresholds of water use and water stress in plants and to detect the timing, location, and predictive factors leading to plant water uptake decline and/or cessation. The nature of the high-resolution data provided by ECOSTRESS allows it to record heat related phenomena such as heat waves and wildfires.

The ECOSTRESS mission launched to the International Space Station on June 29, 2018. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages the mission for the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ECOSTRESS is an Earth Venture Instrument mission; the program is managed by NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

More information about ECOSTRESS is available here: https://ecostress.jpl.nasa.gov/.

For information on Earth science activities aboard the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/issearthscience.