Soil moisture information is just as important to NASA engineers as it is to local farmers. For example, this data is used to monitor climate patterns and predict landslides. Michigan engineers are working on a system that will make collecting and analyzing this important data more accurate.
Currently, most of the data regarding soil moisture comes remotely from instruments attached to satellites. This allows for large scale monitoring, but these systems are in need of on-the-ground feedback for calibration. Electrical engineering professor Mingyan Liu and her team have developed special sensors and are planting them at test sites in Oklahoma and California. This hardware will help make large-scale remote soil moisture sensing more useful. It also offers new opportunities for smaller, local sensing applications.