We work on watershed development which should actually increase the soil moisture. We are trying to detect the change in soil moisture in a barren land using remote sensing. We want to groundtruth the results. What are the tangible effects of increased soil moisture in barren land (e.g. grass being greener for the longer periods)? We can take narratives of the villagers to explore the impact on these effects of soil moisture.
You have alraedy suggest a indirect approach - by looking at the correlation between reflectance from ground vegetation and the soil mositure conditions. You can also try using one of the drought indices. One example is SPEI index (http://spei.csic.es/) which can be used for determining the onset, duration and magnitude of drought conditions. Hope this helps.
Barren land? Usually means no vegetation. With a few rain gauges and evaporation model, estimates might be made on a daily basis if necessary. Evapotranspiration model if vegetation present. Do villagers have access to remote sensing? Various other direct measures might be made with some instruments to accomplish simple tests. Buy a scale and measure the weight of volume of soil from barren areas of interest in container, weigh each day. More weight = moister, less weight drier. You may need to drill a few holes in bottom of container so excess water will not linger too long and can drain out. If villagers want to invest in more expensive tools such as piezometers, buried moisture sensors, or nuclear moisture gauges, they exist. I do not have experience with the nuances available from satellite imagery, but expect interpretations to be beyond most remote village capacity.
You may monitor the surface temperature using thermal images. When soil moisture increases over a barren land surface, its temperature decreases accordingly as there is a significant link between actual evaporation and the equilibrium temperature.
there may be a change in conductivity that is detectable from airborne.
Does NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite measure at a small enough resolution for your needs? https://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/description/
To measure soil moisture using SAVI Transformation using vegetation index ratio infrared and red
Vegetative growth is the direct reflection of improved soil moisture content in an otherwise barren land.
Is oke your opinion that very good. My answer reviewef from spectral signature extracted by remote sensing from soil in vary soil moisture content as reflectan radiance in bands wivelength
You may want to try SMAP or SMOS DATA. However, if you need a high resolution result, you need to disaggregate the data. You may also want to consider the soil water indices using landsat or modis images
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