dataset · USA
NASA WLDAS Project
The Western Land Data Assimilation System (WLDAS), developed at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and funded by the NASA Western Water Applications Office, provides water managers and stakeholders in the western United States with a long-term record of near-surface hydrology for use in drought assessment and water resources planning. WLDAS leverages advanced capabilities in land surface modeling and data assimilation to furnish a system that is customized for stakeholders’ needs in the region.
Visit source ↗Source details
Licence: [Creative Commons BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Evidence quality: 37.5
Listed in aws-odr public catalogue API on 2026-10-16; relevance/value screened (haiku).
Metadata checked: 2026-10-14T13:20:00.000Z
What's in it
- Data offered docs-verified
- soil moisture · snow depth · snow water equivalent · evapotranspiration · soil temperature · groundwater recharge · anomalies of state variables
- Coverage docs-verified
- western United States
- Update frequency docs-verified
- Varies by dataset
- Access docs-verified
- Earthdata Login account required; AWS S3 bucket (us-west-2) with controlled access; licence Creative Commons BY 4.0
Useful for
- Use cases llm-inferred
- Drought assessment using long-term soil moisture and evapotranspiration records for western US basins · Water resources planning inputs such as groundwater recharge and snow water equivalent for western US catchments · Historical anomaly baselines for near-surface hydrology in western US water supply studies
- Audience llm-inferred
- hydrologists · water resources engineers · water managers · GIS analysts
Limitations
- Constraints llm-inferred
- Covers the western United States only, so it is not applicable to UK sites · Requires an Earthdata Login and AWS credentials to retrieve data · Bucket is controlled access, not open · Update frequency varies by dataset, so temporal currency must be checked per product · Outputs are model-simulated (Noah-MP driven by NLDAS-2 meteorology), not direct observations
Evidence
- arn:aws:s3:::gesdisc-cumulus-prod-protected/WLDAS/WLDAS_NOAHMP001_DA1.D1.0
- https://registry.opendata.aws/nasa-wldas/
Check upstream coverage, uncertainty and licence before use. Station observations are not forecasts or design levels.