Summer Research Program 2013/2014

Monitoring soil moisture using GPS signals

Supervisors: Alessandra Monerris & Chris Rdiger Email: sandra.monerris-belda@monash.edu Phone: 03 9905 4976 Department: Civil Engineering

Objective Estimation of soil moisture maps derived from measurements of GPS signals at the plot scale. Description There are many different applications of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as the well-known GPS constellation (see figure on the right): personal positioning, supporting system for aircraft en-route and landing, marine navigation, forest management, mining and oil exploration, land-slides, etc. In the past years, GNSS Reflectometry (GNSS-R) techniques have been developed for environmental applications and are proving to be able to estimate parameters such as sea surface wind speed, vegetation height, sea state, water level, and soil moisture. In July 2013, a prototype GNSS-R instrument will be deployed within a grassland in the region of Yanco, NSW. It will be continuously measuring (i) the direct GPS signal and (ii) the GPS signal that has been reflected at the soil. A changing soil moisture will change the reflected GPS signal, thus allowing the estimation of the soil moisture content. In this project these results will be validated against in-situ measurements from the OzNet hydrological monitoring network (www.oznet.org.au) in order to test the validity of the GNSS-R technique.

Skills: Candidates should have interest in new technologies and a good knowledge of MATLAB programming.