Soil water status and soil temperature are critical parameters for many applications, including continental-scale climate models, soil classification, and drought assessment. National resource management issues for which long-term soil / climate information is needed include: To monitor drought development and trigger plans and policies for mitigation, Investigate climate change scenarios, To predict the long-term sustainability of cropping systems, and watershed health, To monitor and predict changes in crop, range, and woodland productivity in relation to soil moisture-temperature changes, To predict regional shifts in irrigation water requirements which may affect reservoir construction and ground-water levels, To predict shifts in wetlands, To develop new soil moisture accounting and risk assessments, To predict changes in runoff that affect flooding and flood control structures, To verify and ground-truth satellite and soil moisture model information, To predict and mitigate pest and disease outbreaks, For soil classification, For energy conservation, For Input to global circulation models