Madhya Pradesh, a state with the agrarian economy is enriched with black cotton soil and hence forms the ideal land for agriculture. 80% of the state depends on agriculture. Monitoring soil moisture is important as mostly rain-fed agriculture is practiced throughout the state. The above soil moisture map has been prepared by Satyukt Analytics Pvt Ltd as an attempt to make hydrologic data understandable to the public. The average soil moisture map for the month of March shows that the state is relatively dry, which may be a matter of concern for farmers.

Passive microwave sensors provide soil moisture globally at a coarser spatial resolution whereas active microwave sensors have a higher spatial but low temporal resolution (2–4 weeks). Using soil moisture data directly from any of these sensors will have compromised spatial or temporal resolution. Satyukt Analytics Pvt Ltd has developed an innovative methodology which merges active and passive microwave data to obtain soil moisture data of high spatiotemporal resolution. Some of the applications where this high-resolution soil moisture data would be useful are:

• Optimal irrigation in farms
• Identify areas being over-irrigated
• Improved flood risk estimation
• Monitor agricultural drought in near real-time
• Improved weather forecast
• Analyse the impact of an irrigation project
• Identify the irrigated area by an irrigation source
• Automatic billing of farm based on the actual irrigation
• Estimation of actual evapotranspiration taking place
• Estimation of area getting degraded

To watch your region in near real time, please check our app VATI .