Farmland shelterbelts are aimed at farmland protection and productivity improvement, environmental protection and ecological balance, as well as land use planning and management. Farmland shelterbelts play a vital role in determining the structural integrity and overall effectiveness of farmland, and assessing the dynamic changes within these protective forests accurately and swiftly is essential to maintaining their protective functions as well as for policy formulation and effectiveness evaluation in relevant departments. Traditional methods for extracting farmland shelterbelt information have faced significant challenges due to the large workload required and the inconsistencies in the accuracy of existing methods. For example, the existing vegetation index extraction methods often have significant errors, which remain unresolved. Therefore, developing a more efficient extraction method with greater accuracy is imperative. This study focused on Youyi Farm in Heilongjiang Province, China, utilizing satellite data with spatial resolutions ranging from 0.8 m (GF-7) to 30 m (Landsat). By taking into account the growth cycles of farmland shelterbelts and variations in crop types, the optimal temporal window for extraction is identified based on phenological analysis. The study introduced a new index—the Re-Modified Anthocyanin Reflectance Index (RMARI)—which is an improvement on existing vegetation indexes, such as the NDVI and the improved original ARI. Both the accuracy and extraction results showed significant improvements, and the feasibility of the RMARI was confirmed. The study proposed four extraction schemes for farmland shelterbelts: (1) spectral feature extraction, (2) extraction using vegetation indexes, (3) random forest extraction, and (4) RF combined with characteristic index bands. The extraction process was implemented on the GEE platform, and results from different spatial resolutions were compared. Results showed that (1) the bare soil period in May is the optimal time period for extracting farmland shelterbelts; (2) the RF method combined with characteristic index bands produces the best extraction results, effectively distinguishing shelterbelts from other land features; (3) the RMARI reduces background noise more effectively than the NDVI and ARI, resulting in more comprehensive extraction outcomes; and (4) among the satellite images analyzed—GF-7, Planet, Sentinel-2, and Landsat OLI 8—GF-7 achieves the highest extraction accuracy (with a Kappa coefficient of 0.95 and an OA of 0.97), providing the most detailed textural information. However, comprehensive analysis suggests that Sentinel-2 is more suitable for large-scale farmland shelterbelt information extraction. This study provides new approaches and technical support for periodic dynamic forestry surveys, providing valuable reference points for agricultural ecological research.

Soil, a crucial natural resource and the cornerstone of agriculture, profoundly impacts crop growth, quality, and yield. However, soil degradation affects over one-third of global land, with topsoil loss emerging as a significant form of this degradation, posing a grave threat to agricultural sustainability and socio-economic development. Therefore, accurate monitoring of topsoil-loss distribution is essential for formulating effective soil protection and management strategies. Traditional survey methods are limited by time-consuming and labor-intensive processes, high costs, and complex data processing. These limitations make it particularly challenging to meet the demands of large-scale research and efficient information processing. Therefore, it is imperative to develop a more efficient and accurate extraction method. This study focuses on the Heshan Farm in Heilongjiang Province, China, as the research subject and utilizes remote sensing technology and machine learning methods. It introduces multi-source data, including Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data, to design four extraction schemes. (1) spectral feature extraction; (2) spectral feature + topographic feature extraction; (3) spectral feature + index extraction; (4) spectral feature + topographic feature + index extraction. Models for topsoil loss identification based on Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms are developed, and the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is introduced to optimize the models. The performance of the models is evaluated using overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient indicators. The results show that Scheme 4, which integrates spectral features, topographic features, and various indices, performs the best in extraction effects. The RF model demonstrates higher classification accuracy than the SVM model. The optimized PSO-RF and PSO-SVM models show significant improvements in extraction accuracy, especially the PSO-RF model, with an overall accuracy of 0.97 and a Kappa coefficient of 0.94. The PSO-RF model using Scheme 4 improves OA by 34.72% and Kappa by 38.81% compared to the RF model in Scheme 1. Topsoil loss has a significant negative impact on crop growth, severely restricting the normal growth and development of crops. This study provides an efficient technical means for monitoring soil degradation in black-soil regions and offers a scientific basis for formulating effective agricultural ecological protection strategies, thereby promoting the sustainable management of soil resources.

To improve the physical consistency and interpretability of traditional drought indices, this study proposes a drought assessment model that couples physically based constraints with data-driven approaches, leading to the development of a Multivariate Drought Index (MDI). The model employs convolutional neural networks to achieve physically consistent downscaling, thereby obtaining a high-resolution Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI), Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), and Temperature Condition Index (TCI). Objective weights are determined using the Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation method, while random forest and Shapley Additive Explanations are integrated for nonlinear interpretation and physics-guided calibration, forming an ensemble framework that incorporates multi-source and multi-scale factors. Validation with multi-source data from 2000 to 2024 in the major maize-growing areas of Heilongjiang Province demonstrates that MDI outperforms single indices and the Vegetation Health Index (VHI), achieving a correlation coefficient (r = 0.87), coefficient of determination (R² = 0.87), RMSE (0.08), and classification accuracy (87.4%). During representative drought events, MDI identifies signals 16–20 days earlier than the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and the Soil Moisture Condition Index (SMCI), and effectively captures localized drought patches at a 250 m scale. Feature importance analysis indicates that the NDWI and TVDI are consistently identified as dominant factors across all three methods, aligning physically interpretable analysis with statistical contribution. Long-term risk zoning reveals that the central–western region of the study area constitutes a high-risk zone, accounting for 42.6% of the total. This study overcomes the limitations of single indices by integrating physical consistency with the advantages of data-driven methods, achieving refined spatiotemporal characterization and enhanced overall performance, while also demonstrating potential for application across different crops and regions.

Rice lodging is a major agricultural disaster that reduces yield and quality. Accurate lodging detection and causal analysis are essential for disaster mitigation and precision management. To overcome the limited coverage and low automation of conventional approaches, we propose MSR-LodfNet, an enhanced semantic-segmentation model driven by multi-scale remote-sensing imagery, enabling high-precision lodging mapping from regional to field scales. The study selected 13 state-owned farms in Jiansanjiang, Heilongjiang Province, and jointly used PlanetScope satellite images (3 m) and UAV images (0.2 m) to build an integrated workflow of “satellite macro-monitoring, UAV fine verification, and agronomic factor coupling analysis.” The model synergistically optimizes WFNet, DenseASPP multi-scale context enhancement, and Condensed Attention, markedly improving feature extraction and boundary recognition under multi-source imagery. Experimental results show that the model achieves mIoU 84.34% and mPA 93.31% on UAV images and mIoU 81.96% and mPA 90.63% on PlanetScope images, demonstrating excellent cross-scale adaptability and stability. Causal analysis shows that the high-EVI range is significantly positively correlated with lodging probability; its risk is about 6 times that of the low-EVI range, and the lodging probability of direct-seeded rice is about 2.56 times that of transplanted rice, indicating that it may be associated with a higher lodging risk. The results demonstrate that multi-scale remote sensing combined with agronomic parameters can effectively support the mechanism analysis of lodging disasters, providing a quantitative basis and technical reference for precision rice management and lodging-resistant breeding.

Accurately predicting crop yield and its spatiotemporal variability is crucial for precision agriculture. This study developed a prior knowledge-guided remote sensing yield estimation framework at Youyi Farm in China. Based on multi-source data from 2016 to 2025, a Yield-Formation Key Dataset (YFKD) was constructed by integrating Meteorological, Eco-physiological, Phenological, and Soil features. Combined with Boruta feature selection, MLR (Multiple Linear Regression), RF (Random Forest), and XGBoost (Extreme Gradient Boosting) models were compared, and SHAP (Shapley Additive Explanations) was utilized for spatiotemporal driving force analysis. The results showed that the YFKD-XGBoost model achieved the optimal performance ($R^2=0.865$, RMSE = 1491 kg/ha), improving accuracy by up to 17.7% compared to the baseline model. Global SHAP analysis revealed that Soil Spectral Reflectance provided the highest contribution. Temporally, the period from late July to mid-September (especially mid-August) served as the critical monitoring window. Spatially, based on the area share of the dominant negative SHAP contributor, Meteorological Background was the most widespread limiting factor (34.8% of the constrained area), Soil Conditions constraints showed localized clustering (16.4%), while Phenological and Eco-physiological constraints dominated intra-field spatial differentiation. This study validated the feasibility of this framework for high-precision yield estimation and the analysis of yield formation driving factors under the constraints of a limited regional dataset (n = 233), providing reliable support for regional differentiated agricultural management.