The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN)

Surface soil moisture plays an important role in the dynamics of land-atmosphere interactions and many current and upcoming models and satellite sensors. In situ data will be required to provide calibration and validation datasets. Therefore, there is a need for sensor networks at a variety of scales that provide near-real-time soil moisture and temperature data combined with other climate information for use in natural resource planning, drought assessment, water resource management, and resource inventory. The U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)-National Water and Climate Center has established a continental-scale network to address this need, called the Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN). This ever-growing network has more than 116 stations located in 39 states, most of which have been installed since 1999. The stations are remotely located and collect hourly atmospheric, soil moisture, and soil temperature data that are available to the public online in near-real time. New stations are located on benchmark soils when possible. Future plans for the network include increasing the number of stations, improving on user-friendly data summaries, increasing data quality, and scaling the stations to the surrounding region.