mud2dust developer docs
How to read mud2dust's public soil-moisture data, and how to contribute sensors, drone flights, lab samples, or field boundaries through the open contribution API.
Tile server
Read public soil-moisture + companion rasters from anywhere
titiler XYZ tile API at mud2dust.io. Use it from Mapbox GL, MapLibre, QGIS, leafmap, pystac-client, or anything that speaks /{z}/{x}/{y}. No signup.
Sensor / partner API
Connect probes, weather stations, drone flights, lab samples, field boundaries
Versioned at /v1. OpenAPI 3.1 spec is the contract; explorer renders it. Per-shape endpoints for observations, profiles, samples, events, collections, annotations, boundaries.
Scientific plan
The full strategy doc — vision, architecture, phased build, funding, governance
Lives in the repo as docs/plan/scientific-plan.md so it evolves with the work. The “what's done” section is auto-generated from BUILD-PROGRESS.md.
Status — Phase 1 ingest live
- NASA OPERA RTC-S1 σ⁰ pipeline producing daily COGs over Eastern Washington (P1.2).
- Tile API serving real σ⁰ at
https://mud2dust.io/cog/tiles/…(P1.3). - Public map at mud2dust.com with toggleable layers + science narration (P1.4).
- Sensor-bridge POST
/v1/stations+/v1/observationswired to Aurora + Timescale Cloud, with QC + coordinate fuzzing (P1.5).
What this isn't
mud2dust isn't a SaaS wrapper around a single satellite source. It's a calibrated multi-source soil-moisture model with an open contribution platform underneath, designed so distributed L-Band drone cal/val campaigns over instrumented fields produce SMAPVEX- class anchor data outside NASA campaigns. The map is the shopfront; the platform is what makes it possible.