Are there any high spatial resolution soil moisture data products out there which can be accessed by students for free? and how high is the spatial resolution? the higher the better! thank you!
You can find something of your interest on NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis, Surface Flux you may be found Soil moisture (0-10cm) , Soil moisture (10-200cm) 4-times Daily or Daily. You can do a downscaling with this information, please, look for some articles on the web. Check the following
Spatial Downscaling of Satellite Soil Moisture Data Using a Vegetation Temperature Condition Index(10.1109/TGRS.2015.2462074)
Downscaling GLDAS Soil Moisture Data in East Asia through Fusion of Multi-Sensors by Optimizing Modified Regression Trees( doi:10.3390/w9050332 )