Original data for "Combined measurement of soil permittivity and electrical conductivity using UAV-based ground penetrating radar"

Soil water content and salinity are critical for agricultural productivity, ecosystem health, and sustainable land management. Traditional methods for measuring these properties—such as lab-based soil sampling or ground sensors—are labor-intensive, spatially limited, or disruptive. Remote sensing offers broader coverage but struggles to balance resolution, cost, and accuracy. This study introduces a novel unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based system carrying ground-penetrating radar (GPR) with multi-frequency antennas to non-invasively map soil electrical properties (relative permittivity and electrical conductivity), which are empirically linked to water content and salinity. Unlike complex inversion-based approaches, this method uses surface reflection coefficients from GPR scans, enabling rapid, high-resolution field-scale surveys. Field tests in China’s Yangtze River riparian zone and Yellow Sea salinized areas demonstrated strong agreement between UAV-GPR estimates and in-situ soil sensor data. The approach avoids soil disturbance and costly fieldwork, addressing gaps in scalable, precise soil monitoring. By enabling detailed spatial mapping of soil variability, this UAV-GPR method supports precision agriculture (e.g., irrigation optimization), soil health assessment, and salinization management. It bridges the resolution gap between localized sensors and coarse satellite data, offering a practical tool for advancing hydrological research and sustainable land-use practices.