Daily observations enable you to make more informed decisions. What if satellite technology allowed you to determine the soil moisture in any field in the world with data powerful enough to feed into a whole range of applications?
What if this technology was not hampered by clouds, providing a consistent daily data service, near real-time and with an archive that spans decades? VanderSat has turned ‘what if’ into products that meet your needs. Not only for soil moisture but also for temperature and vegetation (Vegetation Optical Depth and biomass).
Combining data from several satellites, VanderSat facilitates detailed daily observation of soil moisture variations across the globe. Our team provides a fully operational service built on decades of experience in passive microwave technology and remote sensing.
Soil moisture into practice
We offer data and analytics on water availability, biomass and temperature to build smarter digital farming solutions for every growing season and every crop.
We reduce the impact of drought on farmers by building smarter crop insurance together with the world’s most innovative (re)insurers and brokers.
We enable accurate benchmarking, essential for accurate predictions and successful water management, in near real time.
Our data on soil moisture, temperature and vegetation (Vegetation Optical Depth and biomass) are retrieved by VanderSat from a constellation of NASA, ESA and JAXA satellites. An important property of microwave data is its insensitivity to cloud cover, enabling the provision of daily global data coverage.
In 2016, VanderSat patented its own downscaling technique for application to passive microwave observations with a typical spatial resolution of 25×25 km. VanderSat reconstructs the antenna footprints for each individual observation and uses the abundant overlaps to downscale to a product resolution of 100×100 m.
Our people share a passion for satellite observation data. And a firm belief that expertise in water and soil moisture is more important than ever. Only the best possible data can enable the people who matter to make the right decisions and take effective action.
Our thirty-strong team is an inspiring mix of data enthusiasts, tech nerds, entrepreneurs and scientists. We live and breathe science. In the field of passive microwave sensing, we have the largest in-house team of earth observation scientists in the world.
Soil moisture is the water present in the unsaturated zone between soil surface and groundwater level. Moisture in this zone is replenished by precipitation, irrigation and capillary rise from deeper layers, and is depleted by percolation, soil evaporation and plant transpiration. Located where the atmosphere meets the Earth’s surface, soil moisture is key to the energy and water balance across the continents. The amount of fresh water stored in the unsaturated zone is vital in providing water and nutrients to the biosphere.
The United Nations considers soil moisture to be an essential variable and one we need to monitor. It plays a crucial role in ecology, agriculture, meteorology and hydrology. The soil stores precipitation, providing essential water for plants, supporting nutrient uptake and affecting the solar energy balance.
Plants need to transpire to drive the uptake of nutrients and water. For this, both water and energy need to be available. Because most vegetation, including agricultural crops, obtain the water they need from the soil, it is clear that soil moisture is a dominant factor in determining the success of a harvest.
Wondering what your possibilities with our data are? Let’s get in touch.
Dr. Richard de Jeu
Founder & CTO
+31 233 87 878 rdejeu@vandersat.com