Inversion of moisture in surface soil of farmland in karst mountainous areas using multi-temporal SAR images
ZHANG Shu1,2,3(), ZHOU Zhongfa1,2(), WANG Lingyu1,3, CHEN Quan1,2, LUO Jiancheng4, ZHAO Xin1,3
1. School of Geography and Environmental Science/School of Karst Science, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang 550001, China 2. The State Key Laboratory Incubation Base for Karst Mountain Ecology Environment of Guizhou Province, Guiyang 550001, China 3. State Engineering Technology Institute for Karst Desertification Control, Guiyang 550001, China 4. Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
The farmland’s soil moisture plays an important role in crop yield estimation and drought monitoring and is also a key parameter for fine-scale monitoring of farmland in karst mountainous areas. Targeting the complex environmental impacts in karst regions such as farmland fragmentation and the fact that the inversion of soil moisture is vulnerable to cloud interference, this study employed both the water cloud model (WCM) and the support vector regression (SVR) model to conduct the block-scale inversion of the soil moisture in the growth periods of tobacco using the multi-temporal Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture Radar (SAR) images and the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) RGB images. The results are as follows. ① In this study, conventional vegetation parameters were replaced with the visible-band difference vegetation index (VDVI), which combined with its water cloud model was highly applicable to karst mountainous areas. The co-polarization method yielded higher inversion precision, with a coefficient of determination of 0.843 and RMSE of 0.983%. These provide a convenient method for the inversion of farmland’s soil moisture in cloudy and rainy mountainous areas. ② The trend of soil moisture in the four growth periods of tobacco is consistent with that of precipitation. Farmland with rocky desertification has low soil moisture, which is closely related to the bare rocks, complex terrain, and difficulties with irrigation in the experimental area. ③ Soil moisture has significant effects on tobacco growth. Specifically, high soil moisture promotes tobacco growth and low soil moisture inhibits tobacco growth, especially during T1—T3. This study can be utilized as a reference for the fine-scale inversion of the farmland’s soil moisture in cloudy and rainy mountainous areas.
Shu ZHANG,Zhongfa ZHOU,Lingyu WANG, et al. Inversion of moisture in surface soil of farmland in karst mountainous areas using multi-temporal SAR images[J]. Remote Sensing for Natural Resources,
2022, 34(3): 154-163.
Tab.1 Dataset list of soil moisture content inversion
生长期
成像时间
平均入射角/(°)
成像模式
极化方式
T1
2020-05-29
40.386
IW1
VV,VH
T2
2020-06-23
40.410
IW1
VV,VH
T3
2020-07-28
40.167
IW1
VV,VH
T4
2020-09-02
40.411
IW1
VV,VH
Tab.2 Sentinel-1 data acquisition situation
生长期
株高/m
叶片数/个
叶展/m
LAI
T1
0.173
3
0.226
0.097
T2
0.671
15
0.823
1.657
T3
1.088
11
1.028
1.447
T4
0.966
3
0.445
0.488
Tab.3 Basic data on different growth periods of tobacco
Fig.2 Technology roadmap
Fig.3 Comparison of measured and estimated soil moisture
Fig.4 Data distribution of soil moisture measured, estimated values and error values in 180 measured sample plots
Fig.5 Statistic on result of soil moisture in study area
Fig.6 Statistics of soil moisture for different growth stages of tabacco
Fig.7 Soil moisture in the experimental areas of tobacco at different growth periods
烟草生 长数据
土壤含水量
T1
T2
T3
T4
株高
-0.132
0.598**
-0.221
0.535**
叶展
-0.466*①
0.401*
0.279
-0.250
叶片数
0.147
0.263
0.279
-0.466*
LAI
-0.385
-0.087
0.171
-0.596**
Tab.4 Correlation coefficients between soil moisture and plant height, leaf length, leaves, LAI during different growth periods of tobacco
Fig.8 Soil moisture and plant height, leaf length, leaves, LAI change process during different growth periods of tobacco
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