The San Joaquin Valley, CA is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the United States and the world. The image shows the Evaporative Stress Index over the San Joaquin Valley on May 22, 2022 at 06:04 PM PDT where many fields show high ESI values that indicate low plant stress whereas low ESI values indicate high plant stress. ECOSTRESS's ability to detect Evaporative Stress over the agricultural fields can help farmers and decision makers in their choices. As California is in a continuing drought, it is important to monitor that agricultural plant life.

ECOSTRESS is a thermal instrument on the International Space Station that measures the temperature of the ground, which is hotter than the air temperature during the day. It was launched to the space station in 2018. Its primary mission is to identify critical thresholds of water use and water stress in plants and to detect the timing, location, and predictive factors leading to plant water uptake decline and/or cessation. The nature of the high-resolution data provided by ECOSTRESS allows it to record heat related phenomena such as heat waves and wildfires.

The ECOSTRESS mission launched to the International Space Station on June 29, 2018. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages the mission for the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ECOSTRESS is an Earth Venture Instrument mission; the program is managed by NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

More information about ECOSTRESS is available here: https://ecostress.jpl.nasa.gov/.

For information on Earth science activities aboard the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/issearthscience.