LATITUDE

The US Department of Agriculture has for the first time incorporated data collected NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite into its crop explorer tool, which shows real-time information on global crops. The tool is used by agriculture analysts to predict everything from crop prices to whether there will be flood halfway around the world. Soil moisture data is a huge piece of this forecast puzzle.

In this map created with data from NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite from May 16-18, 2018, soils that are wetter than normal are seen in greens, while those that are drier than normal are seen in browns. Researchers can monitor the data to...