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Modeling of soil salinity within a semi-arid region using spectral analysis

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Abstract

Soil salinity, is an environmental problem that threatens lands mainly in arid regions. Traditionally, monitoring of salty soils has been a hard task, due to the high expenses of soil samples analysis. Recently, remote sensing techniques provide new alternative to assess and monitor salt affected soil rapidly and over larger areas. The investigation area is a semi-arid region located in southern Tunisia. This study aims to identify classes of soil salinity, explore the potential of multispectral data to discern soil features and patterns of saline soil and predict soil salinity. For this purpose, Landsat 8 data were used to generate nineteen spectral indices. Correlations between reflectance indices and Electrical Conductivity (EC) measured on laboratory, showed that the Short Wave Infrared (SWIR) offers the best correlation with -57 %. Three salinity classes were obtained from image classification, with an overall accuracy 73%. Partial Least Square Regression (PLSR) method was applied to estimate soil salinity. The calibration model gives a moderate coefficient of determination R² =52 % and a RMSE=0.66 dS/m.

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Acknowledgments

The authors express their gratitude to the DAAD project: German Academic Exchange Service for their financial support. The authors thank the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for the provided datasets. We are grateful to the National Engineering School of Sfax and Technische Universität in Dresden for their help and assistance in proceeding of this study. The corresponding author thanks Stefanie Eisold for her help in field survey and Landsat 8 data preprocessing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Water, Energy and Environment, National Engineering School of Sfax, code AD-10-02, B.P.W., 3038, Sfax, Tunisia

    Hela Triki Fourati, Moncef Bouaziz, Mourad Benzina & Samir Bouaziz

  2. Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Institute of Geography, TU-Dresden, Helmholtzstr. 10, D- 01069, Dresden, Germany

    Moncef Bouaziz

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  1. Hela Triki Fourati
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  2. Moncef Bouaziz
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  3. Mourad Benzina
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  4. Samir Bouaziz
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Correspondence to Hela Triki Fourati.

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Triki Fourati, H., Bouaziz, M., Benzina, M. et al. Modeling of soil salinity within a semi-arid region using spectral analysis. Arab J Geosci 8, 11175–11182 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-015-2004-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-015-2004-3

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