Skip to main content
Log in

Monitoring soil salinization and its spatiotemporal variation at different depths across the Yellow River Delta based on remote sensing data with multi-parameter optimization

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Environmental Science and Pollution Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Soil salinization is recognized as a key issue negatively affecting agricultural productivity and wetland ecology. It is necessary to develop effective methods for monitoring the spatiotemporal distribution of soil salinity at a regional scale. In this study, we proposed an optimized remote sensing-based model for detecting soil salinity in different depths across the Yellow River Delta (YRD), China. A multi-dimensional model was built for mapping soil salinity, in which five types of predictive factors derived from Landsat satellite images were exacted and tested, 94 in-situ measured soil salinity samples with depths of 30–40 cm and 90–100 cm were collected to establish and validate the predicting model result. By comparing multiple linear regression (MLR) and partial least squares regression (PLSR) models with considering the correlation between predictive factors and soil salinity, we established the optimized prediction model which integrated the multi-parameter (including SWIR1, SI9, MSAVI, Albedo, and SDI) optimization approach to detect soil salinization in the YRD from 2003 to 2018. The results indicated that the estimates of soil salinity by the optimized prediction model were in good agreement with the measured soil salinity. The accuracy of the PLSR model performed better than that of the MLR model, with the R2 of 0.642, RMSE of 0.283, and MAE of 0.213 at 30–40 cm depth, and with the R2 of 0.450, RMSE of 0.276, and MAE of 0.220 at 90–100 cm depth. From 2003 to 2018, the soil salinity showed a distinct spatial heterogeneity. The soil salinization level of the coastal shoreline was higher; in contrast, lower soil salinization level occurred in the central YRD. In the last 15 years, the soil salinity at depth of 30–40 cm experienced a decreased trend of fluctuating, while the soil salinity at depth of 90–100 cm showed fluctuating increasing trend.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

References

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to show great appreciations to the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their valuable comments and suggestions, and Dr Til P. Pangali S. and Dr. Foyez A. Prodhan for the English language editing.

Funding

This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences-A (No.XDA19030402), Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41871253), the “Taishan Scholar” Project of Shandong Province (No. TSXZ201712), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong (No.2018GNC110025).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Tiantian Chen: methodology, software, writing original draft. Jiahua Zhang: conceptualization, funding acquisition, writing review and editing, supervision. Sha Zhang: software, methodology, writing review and editing, validation. Yun Bai: writing review and editing, validation. Jingwen Wang: writing review and editing, validation. Shuaishuai Li: methodology, writing review and editing, validation. Tehseen Javid: writing review and editing. Xianglei Meng: writing review and editing. Til Prasad Pangali Sharma: writing review and editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jiahua Zhang.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

Not applicable.

Consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Responsible Editor: Kitae Baek

Publisher's note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Highlights

An optimized multi-parameter model was established for soil salinity prediction at vertical soil depth.

Long-term spatiotemporal characteristics of soil salinization in Yellow River Delta (YRD) were monitored.

The saline area of YRD increased after a temporary declining from 2003 to 2018.

Coastal land displays significantly higher salinity than that of in inland areas of YRD.

The detection accuracy of surface soil salinity is higher than that of deep soil salinity.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (DOC 12 KB)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cheng, T., Zhang, J., Zhang, S. et al. Monitoring soil salinization and its spatiotemporal variation at different depths across the Yellow River Delta based on remote sensing data with multi-parameter optimization. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 24269–24285 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17677-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17677-y

Keywords

Navigation