Soil salinization affects crop production and food security. Mapping spatial distribution and severity of salinity is essential for agricultural management and development. This study was aimed to test the effectiveness of machine learning algorithms for soil salinity mapping taking the Mussaib area in Central Mesopotamia as an example.A combined dataset consisting of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and ALOS L-band radar data acquired at the same time was used for fulfilling the task. Relevant biophysical indicators were derived from the TM images, and the soil component was retrieved by removing the vegetation contribution from the L-band radar backscattering coefficients. Field-measured salinity at the three corner plots of triangles were averaged to represent the salinity of these triangular areas. These averaged plots were converted into raster by either direct rasterization or buffering-based rasterization into different cell size to create the training set (TS). One of the three triangle corners was randomly selected to constitute a validation set (VS). Using this TS, the support vector regression (SVR) and random forest regression (RFR) algorithms were then applied to the combined dataset for salinity prediction. Results revealed that RFR performed better than SVR with higher accuracy (93.4-94.2% vs. 85.2-89.4%) and less normalized root mean square error (NRMSE; 6.10-7.69% vs. 10.29-10.52%) when calibrated with both TS and VS.In comparison, prediction by multivariate linear regression (MLR) achieved in our previous study using the same datasets also showed less NRMSE than SVR. Hence, both RFR and MLR are recommended for soil salinity mapping. KEYWORDScombined optical-radar dataset, field sample rasterization, random forest regression, soil salinity prediction, support vector regression

No abstract

Abstract. The absence of a compiled large-scale catchment characteristics dataset is a key obstacle limiting the development of large-sample hydrology research in China. We introduce the first large-scale catchment attribute dataset in China. We compiled diverse data sources, including soil, land cover, climate, topography, and geology, to develop the dataset. The dataset also includes catchment-scale 31-year meteorological time series from 1990 to 2020 for each basin. Potential evapotranspiration time series based on Penman's equation are derived for each basin. The 4911 catchments included in the dataset cover all of China. We introduced several new indicators that describe the catchment geography and the underlying surface differently from previously proposed datasets. The resulting dataset has a total of 125 catchment attributes and includes a separate HydroMLYR (hydrology dataset for machine learning in the Yellow River Basin) dataset containing standardized weekly averaged streamflow for 102 basins in the Yellow River Basin. The standardized streamflow data should be able to support machine learning hydrology research in the Yellow River Basin. The dataset is freely available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5729444 (Zhen et al., 2021). In addition, the accompanying code used to generate the dataset is freely available at https://github.com/haozhen315/CCAM-China-Catchment-Attributes-and-Meteorology-dataset (last access: 26 November 2021) and supports the generation of catchment characteristics for any custom basin boundaries. Compiled data for the 4911 basins covering all of China and the open-source code should be able to support the study of any selected basins rather than being limited to only a few basins.

SDGSAT-1 was launched in November 2021, and TIS (Thermal infrared sensor) is a major instrument onboard this satellite. An analysis of the radiometric calibration and noise performance of the TIS has been carried out in the thermal vacuum chamber before launch in order to ensure that it meets the requirements. The prelaunch test results show NEdT (noise equivalent temperature difference) is 0.034 K, 0.047 K and 0.076 K@300 K for the three bands, respectively. The maximum fitting residuals are less than 0.5 K at measured blackbody temperatures. In addition, this paper also discusses the dependence between TIS performance and instrument temperature and focal plane array (FPA) temperature. The good radiometric and noise performance of TIS demonstrates it has potential to provide high resolution thermal remote sensing data in urban heat island, and other environmental issues research.