**8.1. Determination of soil moisture over India using space-borne passive microwave sensors on board SMOS**

Soil moisture is being estimated for three states, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat (**Figure 13**), by the satellite products, namely SMOS (soil moisture and salinity) launched by European Space Agency (ESA), MODIS (NDVI and LST from Terra/Aqua) and SSMIS (Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder) by NASA for (LST) using Beam 4.9 software.

Satellite data-based fusion approach to develop soil moisture monitoring system in India: Methodology has been developed for the estimation of soil moisture using SAR data from PALSAR (phase array L-band synthetic aperture radar) and NDVI from MODIS using NEST and POLSAR-PRO software. On experimental mode, soil moisture maps have been generated in Moga, Hissar, Roorkee, Saharanpur, Meerut, Dhanbad and Moradabad with the resolution of 25 m.
