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FLDAS: Project Goals

FLDAS is the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Land Data Assimilation System

The FLDAS Global model (McNally et al. 2017) is a custom instance of the NASA Land Information System (LIS; http://lis.gsfc.nasa.gov/) that has been adapted to work with domains, data streams, and monitoring and forecast requirements associated with food security assessment in data-sparse, developing country settings. Adopting LIS allows FEWS NET to leverage existing land surface models and generate ensembles of soil moisture, ET, and other variables based on multiple meteorological inputs or land surface models. The goal of the FLDAS project is to achieve more effective use of limited available hydroclimatic observations and is designed to be adopted for routine use for FEWS NET decision support. 

In addition to the Global modeling, we routinely model snow and other variables over Central Asia. These data are provided to USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center where specialized snow products are produced for agroclimatology partners in Afghanistan. Data and additional products are available at the USGS FEWS NET Data Portal.

 

FLDAS Workflow