Why this matters
Soil moisture controls how water, energy, and carbon move through the land surface, but satellites often only “see” the top few centimeters of soil. That’s a problem if you care about root-zone moisture, drought, or crop health. This project explored whether low-frequency P-band radiometers (around 750 MHz) can push soil-moisture sensing deeper—down to about 15 cm compared with roughly 5 cm for conventional L-band systems.
What I worked on
Through the IIT Bombay–Monash University Research Academy, I spent 2.5 months at Monash University working with a tower-mounted P-band/L-band radiometer setup over an agricultural paddock. I helped run a field campaign to build a time-series dataset inside the radiometer footprint, collecting ground samples and measurements of soil moisture and temperature at multiple depths, surface roughness, particle size distribution, vegetation water content, and NDVI from optical sensors.
My contribution & what I learned
I focused on building and maintaining the ground dataset that underpinned the project. This involved organizing repeated measurements, keeping consistent sampling locations, and tracking vegetation and surface conditions over time so the data could be reliably paired with the radiometer observations. While the development of the soil-moisture retrieval algorithm and final analysis continued after my visit, my contribution ensured that the team had a consistent, well-documented time series to work with. The experience gave me hands-on exposure to field instrumentation, environmental data collection, and the practical challenges of supporting large-scale remote-sensing experiments.