Developed by the Virtual Irrigation Academy, piloted water front detectors (WFD) are a simple soil moisture tool that informs farmers when to irrigate and when to stop applying water to their fields. Now, freely available satellite data, covering a wide geographical area with repeated measurements over time, offers an alternative way to monitor and assess intervention impacts in fragmented smallholder landscapes. A wide range of freely available satellite data sources exist, capturing the Earth’s surface in various levels of detail. Landsat 8 satellite data provided the best available resolution for the period during which on-farm water management interventions took place.