Retrieval and Mapping of Soil Organic Carbon Using Sentinel-2A Spectral Images from Bare Cropland in Autumn

Abstract

Soil is the largest carbon reservoir on the terrestrial surface. Soil organic carbon (SOC) not only regulates global climate change, but also indicates soil fertility level in croplands. SOC prediction based on remote sensing images has generated great interest in the research field of digital soil mapping. The short revisiting time and wide spectral bands available from Sentinel-2A (S2A) remote sensing data can provide a useful data resource for soil property prediction. However, dense soil surface coverage reduces the direct relationship between soil properties and S2A spectral reflectance such that it is difficult to achieve a successful SOC prediction model. Observations of bare cropland in autumn provide the possibility to establish accurate SOC retrieval models using the S2A super-spectral reflectance. Therefore, in this study, we collected 225 topsoil samples from bare cropland in autumn and measured the SOC content. We also obtained S2A spectral images of the western Guanzhong Plain, China. We established four SOC prediction models, including random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), partial least-squares regression (PLSR), and artificial neural network (ANN) based on 15 variables retrieved from the S2A images, and compared the prediction accuracy using RMSE (root mean square error), R2 (coefficient of determination), and RPD (ratio of performance to deviation). Based on the optimal model, the spatial distribution of SOC was mapped and analyzed. The results indicated that the inversion model with the RF algorithm achieved the highest accuracy, with an R2 of 0.8581, RPD of 2.1313, and RMSE of 1.07. The variables retrieved from the shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands (B11 and B12) usually had higher variable importance, except for the ANN model. SOC content mapped with the RF model gradually decreased with increasing distance from the Wei river, and values were higher in the west than in the east. These results matched the SOC distribution based on measurements at the sample sites. This research provides evidence that soil properties such as SOC can be retrieved and spatially mapped based on S2A images that are obtained from bare cropland in autumn.

Keywords

• soil organic carbon
• sentinel-2A
• random forest
• seasonal bare cropland
• variable importance