Remotely sensed data products are being used in the development of a hydrologic model for the conterminous United States that will provide water availability information on local, regional, and national scales. Remotely sensed data, in combination with other remote sensing-derived national data products, are used to improve default model parameters and provide calibration and evaluation targets for the national hydrologic modeling effort. These products currently include:
• Actual evapotranspiration (AET) from MOD16 (Global Terrestrial Evapotranspiration Data Set)
• AET from the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model
• Snow cover area (SCA) from MOD10CM (MODIS/Terra Snow Cover Monthly L3 Global 0.05Deg CMG)
• Snow water equivalent from the NOAA National Weather Service's National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (NOHRSC) SNOw Data Assimilation System (SNODAS)
• Growing season from the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center phenology product