Evaluating reclamation levels of coastal saline soil using laboratory hyperspectral data

Abstract

Considerable proportions of coastal saline tidelands in China have been reclaimed for agricultural land uses in the past 30 years. This study aims to investigate the potential utility of laboratory hyperspectral data for evaluating the reclamation levels of those saline lands. A coastal region of Shangyu City (Zhejiang Province) was used as the study area, which was then grouped into four subzones according to the reclamation history. Soil samples were collected at each subzone, and they were characterized by high electrical conductivity and sand content and low organic matter; the longer the saline lands have been reclaimed, the lower the electrical conductivity and sand content are and the higher the organic matter content is. These changing trends of the soil chemical and physical properties can be indicated by the laboratory reflectance spectra of the soil samples. Stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA) was applied to select and identify six salient spectral bands at 488, 530, 670, 880, 1400, and 1900 nm. Using derived discriminant functions, saline lands with different historical years of reclamation were classified with an overall accuracy of 86.6% in a self-test and 89.3% in a cross validation. Finally, this study suggests that remotely sensed hyperspectral data serve as promising measures to assess the reclamation levels of coastal saline soil, as opposed to time-consuming field investigations.