L-band microwave soil moisture mapping on golf greens, with handheld-probe validation (Waterford Valley Golf Club, Melbourne)

Supporting data for a study of passive L-band (1.4 GHz) microwave soil moisture mapping of golf putting greens, validated against handheld probe measurements at Waterford Valley Golf Club, Melbourne, Australia. The deposit contains ten comma-separated files, one microwave file and one probe file for each of five greens (10, 11, 13, 16, 17), collected in a single measurement session on 12–13 January 2026 (UTC). The microwave_green_N.csv files contain dense point measurements (349–460 per green) of retrieved volumetric water content (VWC) from a greensmower-mounted L-band radiometer, along with timestamps, WGS84 coordinates, and GNSS altitude. The tdr_green_N.csv files hold sparse ground-reference points (19–22 per green) from two handheld probes: the HydraProbe (the validation reference used in the paper) and an independent FieldScout TDR 350 used in the discussion cross-check.These data underlie the validation statistics (R², R²max, bias, debiased RMSE, and derived microwave random error), the microwave/probe correlation figures, the spatial VWC maps, and the per-green mean and standard deviation reported in the paper. A self-contained Python script (reproduce.py, standard library only) regenerates these statistics directly from the CSV files.The single-session snapshot used for validation and the spatial maps are included here. The multi-session time-series maps in the paper were generated from a separate accumulated dataset that is available from the authors on request. Proprietary instrument-control firmware and hardware design files are not included, as they are commercial technology of Skaha Remote Sensing Ltd.