Digital Mapping of Soil Properties Using Multivariate Statistical Analysis and ASTER Data in an Arid Region

Remote Sensing

Said Nawar¹  Henning Buddenbaum²  Joachim Hill²  George Petropoulos³ 

[1] Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Jagiellonian University, Krakow 30-387, Poland;Environmental Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics, Trier University, 54286 Trier, Germany; E-Mails:;id="af1-remotesensing-07-01181">1Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Jagiellonian University, Krakow 30-387, Pola

关键词: digital soil mapping;    soil properties;    ASTER;    PLSR;    MARS;    Egypt;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs70201181

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Modeling and mapping of soil properties has been identified as key for effective land degradation management and mitigation. The ability to model and map soil properties at sufficient accuracy for a large agriculture area is demonstrated using Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery. Soil samples were collected in the El-Tina Plain, Sinai, Egypt, concurrently with the acquisition of ASTER imagery, and measured for soil electrical conductivity (EC_e), clay content and soil organic matter (OM). An ASTER image covering the study area was preprocessed, and two predictive models, multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) and the partial least squares regression (PLSR), were constructed based on the ASTER spectra. For all three soil properties, the results of MARS models were better than those of the respective PLSR models, with cross-validation estimated R² of 0.85 and 0.80 for EC_e, 0.94 and 0.90 for clay content and 0.79 and 0.73 for OM. Independent validation of EC_e, clay content and OM maps with 32 soil samples showed the better performance of the MARS models, with R² = 0.81, 0.89 and 0.73, respectively, compared to R² = 0.78, 0.87 and 0.71 for the PLSR models. The results indicated that MARS is a more suitable and superior modeling technique than PLSR for the estimation and mapping of soil salinity (EC_e), clay content and OM. The method developed in this paper was found to be reliable and accurate for digital soil mapping in arid and semi-arid environments.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.