We have tested a satellite soil moisture downscaling model developed by using an in-situ dataset (http://www.eng.newcastle.edu.au/sasmas/SASMAS/sasdata.html) over our focus catchment. In this work, we used near surface in-situ soil moisture and temperature data (0-5 cm soil depth) for the period of 2004-2014. The monitoring stations were equipped with Stevens Hydraprobes for the near surface measurements. In addition to that, we used in-situ soil moisture data of 2015 for validation and comparison.
We just submitted a paper a couple of days ago with our results.