Abstract
In order to select a reasonable controlling mode of rocky desertification and restrain the development of rocky desertification with local conditions, the soil moisture in Karst area was studied by using full-polarization Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data in this paper. Based on the decisive role of rocky desertification degree, vegetation, slope and characteristic of the soil, different models were employed to invert the soil moisture in different rocky desertification degree areas according to their land use type and vegetation as follows: (1) The advanced integral equation model (AIEM) was employed in the intensive rocky desertification and serious rocky desertification areas. (2) The water-cloud model (WCM) coupled with AIEM was employed in the slight rocky desertification and moderate rocky desertification areas. (3) The Michigan microwave canopy scattering (MIMICS) model coupled with AIEM was employed in the non-rocky desertification and potential rocky desertification areas. As a result, the soil moisture was inverted successfully in the whole study area with the total inversion accuracy of 84.37% and RMSE of 2.10. This result demonstrates that the proposed method can invert the soil moisture accurately and provide a powerful technical support for inverting the soil moisture in the Karst area with large span, fluctuating landform and diverse vegetation.
Highlights
Due to the characteristics of low environmental capacity, high sensitivity to variation, poor ecological stability as well as unreasonable human interference activities [1], there is serious rocky desertification mainly presented as vegetation destruction, soil erosion and large-area exposed bedrocks in the Karst area
In this paper, the distribution of the rocky desertification degree, as shown in Fig.4(a), was determined by the distribution of the comprehensive rocky desertification index which is obtained on ArcGIS software by inputting the normalized slope, vegetation coverage, and land use type
The distribution of soil moisture is obtained based on the full-polarization Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) supplemented with digital elevation matrix (DEM) and normalized vegetation index (NDVI)
Summary
Due to the characteristics of low environmental capacity, high sensitivity to variation, poor ecological stability as well as unreasonable human interference activities [1], there is serious rocky desertification mainly presented as vegetation destruction, soil erosion and large-area exposed bedrocks in the Karst area. The focus of research has gradually changed to restoration mechanism, reconstruction technology and adaptive regulation mechanism of ecosystem in the Karst rocky desertification area with the increasing attention to the ecological environment. Owing to the poor soil and fragile ecosystem, soil moisture is the key element of stability and productivity of ecosystem, and is the primarily foundation of ecological restoration and reconstruction in the Karst rocky desertification area [4]. The regulation about the ability of retention and conduction of soil moisture is one of the most important measures for restraining the development of rocky desertification in the Karst area. It is essential to determine the soil moisture for controlling the rocky desertification and restoring ecosystem in the Karst area
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