Salinization is a major eco-environmental threat in arid and semi-arid regions. Machine learning combined with salinization-related factors extracted from satellite images and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data to monitor salinization is popular in recent years. The hyper-parameters referring to the parameters prior to fitting the model to the data and the features referring to the factors used for model establishment are vital to modelling accuracy, while the optimization of the above two was not given enough attention. In this study, we proposed a novel approach for simultaneously identifying the input features and hyper-parameters of Support Vector Regression (SVR) based on Adaptive Genetic Algorithm (AGA) for quantitative assessment of salinization in Weigan-Kuqa river delta oasis (Wei-Ku oasis), Sangong River Basin, and Qitai oasis of Xinjiang. First, a total of 41 salinization-related factors of 7 categories were extracted from Landsat 5 TM and DEM data. In each sub-region, the Pearson’s correlation analysis was developed between Soil Salt Content (SSC) and salinization-related factors, and the factors significantly correlated with SSC were arranged in descending order of absolute correlation coefficient to form the Candidate Feature Variables (CFVs). The ration of Coefficient of Determination (R²) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) multiplied by 1000 was considered as the fitness function of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and AGA. The CFVs and hyper-parameters were combined together and binary coded, then brought into the AGA and GA for simultaneous feature selection and hyper-parameters optimization of SVR, and established salinization monitoring models (AGA-SVR, GA-SVR). In order to highlight the importance of identifying the input features and hyper-parameter to modelling accuracy, the GS-SVR with all the CFVs as input was established using Grid Search (GS) algorithm to optimize the hyper-parameters. Finally, the salinization maps predicted by three models were compared. The results showed that the sensitivity of salinization-related factors to SSC varied with regions, and 25, 16, 24 salinization-related factors were selected as CFVs in Wei-Ku oasis, Sangong River Basin, and Qitai oasis, respectively. Compared with GS-SVR, the GA-SVR and AGA-SVR got more accurate salinization monitoring with fewer features as input, and fitness generated by AGA-SVR increased by 25.968% in Wei-Ku oasis, 25.159% in Sangong River Basin, 27.568% in Qitai oasis, respectively. Both nature and human factors lead to salinization. The difference of Land Surface Temperature (LST) was the main contributor of different salinization between Wei-Ku oasis of southern Xinjiang and the other two sub-regions of northern Xinjiang. The differences in soil texture, irrigation methods, and livestock carrying capacity were the main factors resulting in differences of salinization in Qitai oasis and Sangong River Basin. Our study shows that the proposed approach can provide technical support for accurate salinization monitoring.

Soil salinization endangers the development of ecological agriculture. As soil salinization is often heavily affected by regional environments, difficulties arise when constructing an adaptive multi-regional soil salinity estimation model. In this study, we proposed an extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) model based on the Tree-structure Parzen Estimator (TPE) optimization algorithm to apply to four study areas with different environments (TPE-XGBoost). The four areas are the Weigan-Kuqa Oasis (Weiku), the Sangong River Basin (Sgr) and the Qitai Oasis in Xinjiang, China, and the middle and lower reaches of the Syr Darya Basin in Kazakhstan. Most previous soil salinity studies did not pay much attention to the impact of feature selection and hyper-parameter tuning on the performance of machine learning models, and the complex dependence and interaction between input features and hyper-parameters. In order to improve the performance of XGBoost model in estimating soil salinity, we proposed for the first time to use TPE algorithm to jointly optimize feature selection and hyper-parameter tuning, and verified it in four areas. Coefficient of determination (R²) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) were used to evaluate the model performance. First, we calculated 55 environmental features from Landsat and terrain data. Then, in order to reduce the computational complexity of the TPE-XGBoost model, we used Pearson correlation analysis between surface soil salinity content (SSC) and features to initially filter out the features that were not significantly related (P > 0.05). Finally, the TPE algorithm was used to jointly optimize the parameter space composed of features and hyper-parameters. The results showed that (1) TPE joint optimization algorithm significantly improved the performance of the XGBoost model, achieving high accuracy in the four areas, and had powerful generalization. R² values of test sets for Weiku Oasis, Qitai Oasis, Sgr Basin, and the Syr Basin were 0.95, 0.95, 0.80, and 0.81, respectively. (2) There is no universal feature can be applied to soil salinity inversion in different environments. TPE algorithm adaptively selected different types and numbers of features for four areas, 19, 11, 25, and 15 features were selected in Weiku Oasis, Qitai Oasis, Sgr Basin, and the Syr Basin, respectively. This showed that the optimal model parameters should not be fixed parameters, but should be re-determined locally according to different environmental conditions. The TPE algorithm can capture the features that reflect environmental differences. (3) The XGBoost model can provide feature importance ranking, which improves the interpretability of machine learning model. The importance analysis results showed that the features had different contributions in different areas. The TPE-XGBoost model proposed in this study has great potential in multi-regional soil salt estimation research.

Pine Wilt Disease (PWD) is a devastating global forest disease that spreads rapidly and causes severe ecological and economic losses. Drone remote sensing imaging technology is an effective way to detect PWD and control its spread. However, the existing algorithms for detecting PWD using drone images have low recognition accuracy, difficult image calibration, and slow detection speed. We propose a fast detection algorithm for PWD based on an improved YOLOv8 model. The model first adds a small object detection layer to the Neck module in the YOLOv8 base framework to improve the detection performance of small diseased pine trees and then inserts three attention mechanism modules on the backbone network to extend the sensory field of the network to enhance the extraction of image features of deep diseased pine trees. To evaluate the proposed algorithm framework, we collected and created a dataset in Weihai City, China, containing PWD middle-stage and late-stage infected tree samples. The experimental results show that the improved YOLOv8s-GAM model achieves 81%, 67.2%, and 76.4% optimal detection performance on mAP50, mAP50-95, and Mean evaluation metrics, which is 4.5%, 4.5%, and 2.7% higher than the original YOLOv8s model. Our proposed improved YOLOv8 model basically meets the needs of large-scale PWD epidemic detection and can provide strong technical support for forest protection personnel.

An improved ionospheric tomography algorithm is developed for the tomographic reconstruction of the ionospheric electron density distribution based on the automatic search technology of relaxation factor, in which the automatic search technology is a training process to optimize the relaxation factors of the iterative algorithm. In comparison with some classical tomography algorithms, the proposed algorithm can not only greatly improve the efficiency of inversion but also obtain ionospheric electron density images with high fidelity. A careful validation of the proposed algorithm is performed by conducting numerical experiments with Global Positioning System simulation and real data, and according to the results of the quantitative comparison and statistical analysis, compared with other classical ionospheric tomography algorithms, the proposed algorithm exhibits significantly reconstruction accuracy.

The fine particles produced during the desertification process provide a rich material source for sand and dust activities. Accurately locating the desertified areas is a prerequisite for human intervention in sand and dust activities. In arid and semi-arid regions, due to very sparse vegetation coverage, the microwave surface scattering model is very suitable for describing the variation of topsoil property during the process of desertification. However, the microwave backscattering coefficient (MBC) trend of the soil during the desertification process is still unclear now. Moreover, the MBC of a resolution unit usually involves the contribution of soil and vegetation. These problems seriously limit the application of microwave remote sensing technology in desertification identification. In this paper, we studied the soil MBC change trend during the desertification process and proposed a microwave backscattering contribution decomposition (MBCD) model to estimate the soil MBC of a resolution unit. Furthermore, a simple microwave backscattering threshold (SMSBT) model was established to describe the severity of desertification. The MBCD and SMSBT models were verified qualitatively through landscape photos of sampling points from a field survey in November 2018. The results showed that the MBC would gradually decline with the deepening degree of desertification. The MBCD model and the corresponding least squares method can be used to estimate the soil MBC accurately, and the SMSBT model can accurately distinguish different degrees of desertification. The results of desertification classification showed that more than 68% of the dry bottom of the Aral Sea is suffering from different degrees of desertification.

Soil salinization is a global ecological and environmental problem, which is particularly serious in arid areas. The formation process of soil salinity is complex, and the interactive effects of natural causes and anthropogenic activities on soil salinization are elusive. Therefore, we propose an automated machine learning framework for predicting soil salt content (SSC), which can search for the optimal model without human intervention. At the same time, post hoc interpretation methods and graph theory knowledge are introduced to visualize the nonlinear interactions of variables related to SSC. The proposed method shows robust and adaptive performance in two typical arid regions (Central Asia and Xinjiang Province in western China) under different environmental conditions. The optimal algorithms for the Central Asia and Xinjiang regions are Extremely Randomized Trees (ET) and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), respectively. Moreover, precipitation and minimum air temperature are important feature variables for salt-affected soils in Central Asia and Xinjiang, and their strongest interaction effects are latitude and normalized difference water index. In both study areas, meteorological factors exhibit the greatest effect on SSC, and demonstrate strong spatiotemporal interactions. Soil salinization intensifies with long-term climate warming. Regions with severe SSC variation are mainly distributed around the irrigation water source and in low-terrain basins. From 1950 to 2100, the regional mean SSC (g/kg) varies by +20.94% and +64.76% under extreme scenarios in Central Asia and Xinjiang, respectively. In conclusion, our study provides a novel automated approach for interaction analysis of driving factors on soil salinization in drylands.