Soil Salinity Mapping Using Remote Sensing and GIS

Abstract

Monitoring of Soil salinity plays a vital role in the agricultural society. Soil salinity causes land degradation processes, especially in arid and semi-arid regions which influence soil properties, reduce yield production of crops, and affect infrastructure. This research produces soil salinity mapping of East Delta in Egypt in 1995 using remote sensing technology. Landsat 5 image taken on September 26, 1995, was used. Radiometric and atmospheric corrections for satellite data were applied. Different salinity indices (SI) were used such as Normalized Difference Salinity Index (NDSI), SI1, SI2, SI3, SI4, SI5, SI6, and SI7 beside Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) which was used for data filtration. The field’s Electrical Conductivity (EC) was measured during the period from 22 to 26 September 1995 by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). This data was used as ground truth for the correlation analysis with different indices image bands values. SLR (Simple linear regression) and Mean RE (Relative error) were used to find the best index which was SI5 with a 0.87 correlation with field truth data and mean RE equal 22.7% This index was used to produce a salinity map of the Eastern Delta with acceptable accuracy. Finally, it is concluded that using remote sensing in salinity detection and mapping is highly appreciated.