The suitability evaluation of agricultural land at the regional scale is of great significance for protecting land and water resources and building sustainable agricultural systems. Based on climate, soil, topographical, and surface water resources, land suitability index (LSI) data for maize, rice, and soybeans are established using an analytical hierarchy process and matter element analysis (AHP–MEA) model in Jilin Province, China. The results show that there is a significant positive linear correlation between the LSI and the measured yield, which indicates that the model has an ideal effect and certain reference and extension significance. The main limiting factors for maize and soybean planting are pH, total nitrogen (TN), available phosphorus (AP), and soil texture, while water shortage limits rice planting. Different spatial structure optimization schemes for planting are established using the LSI and measured yield, along with economic indices. This study shows that the scheme that integrates policy and cost can make full use of land and water resources and promote the economic growth of agriculture. After optimization, the planting areas of maize, rice, and soybeans were 7.22, 2.44, and 0.71 million ha, respectively, representing an increase of 15.71 billion yuan over the agricultural GDP for the existing planting structure. It is expected that this study will provide a basis for follow-up studies on crop cultivation suitability.

Black soil in northeast China is gradually degraded and soil organic matter (SOM) content decreases at a rate of 0.5% per year because of the long-term cultivation. SOM content can be obtained rapidly by visible and near-infrared (Vis–NIR) spectroscopy. It is critical to select appropriate preprocessing techniques for SOM content estimation through Vis–NIR spectroscopy. This study explored three categories of preprocessing techniques to improve the accuracy of SOM content estimation in black soil area, and a total of 496 ground samples were collected from the typical black soil area at 0–15 cm in Hai Lun City, Heilongjiang Province, northeast of China. Three categories of preprocessing include denoising, data transformation and dimensionality reduction. For denoising, Svitzky-Golay filter (SGF), wavelet packet transform (WPT), multiplicative scatter correction (MSC), and none (N) were applied to spectrum of ground samples. For data transformation, fractional derivatives were allowed to vary from 0 to 2 with an increment of 0.2 at each step. For dimensionality reduction, multidimensional scaling (MDS) and locally linear embedding (LLE) were introduced and compared with principal component analysis (PCA), which was commonly used for dimensionality reduction of soil spectrum. After spectral pretreatments, a total of 132 partial least squares regression (PLSR) models were constructed for SOM content estimation. Results showed that SGF performed better than the other three denoising methods. Low-order derivatives can accentuate spectral features of soil for SOM content estimation; as the order increases from 0.8, the spectrum were more susceptible to spectral noise interferences. In most cases, 0.2–0.8 order derivatives exhibited the best estimation performance. Furthermore, PCA yielded the optimal predictability, the mean residual predictive deviation (RPD) and maximum RPD of the models using PCA were 1.79 and 2.60, respectively. The application of appropriate preprocessing techniques could improve the efficiency and accuracy of SOM content estimation, which is important for the protection of ecological and agricultural environment in black soil area.

Drought, which causes the economic, social, and environmental losses, also threatens food security worldwide. In this study, we developed a vegetation-soil water deficit (VSWD) method to better assess agricultural droughts. The VSWD method considers precipitation, potential evapotranspiration (PET) and soil moisture. The soil moisture from different soil layers was compared with the in situ drought indices to select the appropriate depths for calculating soil moisture during growing seasons. The VSWD method and other indices for assessing the agricultural droughts, i.e., Scaled Drought Condition Index (SDCI), Vegetation Health Index (VHI) and Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI), were compared with the in situ and multi-scales of Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEIs). The results show that the VSWD method has better performance than SDCI, VHI, and TVDI. Based on the drought events collected from field sampling, it is found that the VSWD method can better distinguish the severities of agricultural droughts than other indices mentioned here. Moreover, the performances of VSWD, SPEIs, SDCI and VHI in the major historical drought events recorded in the study area show that VSWD has generated the most sensible results than others. However, the limitation of the VSWD method is also discussed.

The use of satellite remote sensing could effectively predict maize yield. However, many statistical prediction models using remote sensing data cannot extend to the regional scale without considering the regional climate. This paper first introduced the hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) method to solve maize-yield prediction problems over years and regions. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), calculated by the spectrum of the Landsat 8 operational land imager (OLI), and meteorological data were introduced as input parameters in the maize-yield prediction model proposed in this paper. We built models using 100 samples from 10 areas, and used 101 other samples from 34 areas to evaluate the model’s performance in Jilin province. HLM provided higher accuracy with an adjusted determination coefficient equal to 0.75, root mean square error (RMSE_V) equal to 0.94 t/ha, and normalized RMSE_V equal to 9.79%. Results showed that the HLM approach outperformed linear regression (LR) and multiple LR (MLR) methods. The HLM method based on the Landsat 8 OLI NDVI and meteorological data could flexibly adjust in different regional climatic conditions. They had higher spatiotemporal expansibility than that of widely used yield estimation models (e.g., LR and MLR). This is helpful for the accurate management of maize fields.

Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentration retrieval is essential for water quality monitoring, aquaculture, and guiding coastline infrastructure construction. Compared with common ocean color satellites, land observation satellites have the advantage of a higher resolution and more data sources for retrieving the concentration of Chl-a from optically shallow waters. However, the sun glint (R_sg), bottom reflectance (R_b), and non-algal particle (NAP) derived from terrigenous matter affect the accuracy of Chl-a concentration retrieval using land observation satellite image data. In this paper, we propose a semi-empirical algorithm based on the remote sensing reflectance (R_rs) of SPOT6 to retrieve the Chl-a concentration in Sanya Bay (SYB), considering the effect of R_sg, R_b, and NAP. In this semi-empirical algorithm, the Cox–Munk anisotropic model and radiative transfer model (RTM) were used to reduce the effects of R_sg and R_b on R_rs, and the Chl-a concentration was retrieved by the Chl-a absorption coefficient at 490 nm (a_phy(490)) to remove the effect of NAP. The semi-empirical algorithm was in the form of Chl-a = 43.3[a_phy(490)]^1.454, where a_phy (490) was calculated by the total absorption coefficient and the absorption coefficients of each component by empirical algorithms. The results of the Chl-a concentration retrieval show the following: (1) SPOT6 data are available for Chl-a retrieval using this semi-empirical algorithm in oligotrophic or mesotrophic coastal waters, and the accuracy of the algorithm can be improved by removing the effects of R_sg, R_b, and NAP (R² from 0.71 to 0.93 and root mean square error (RMSE) from 0.23 to 0.11 ug/L); (2) empirical algorithms based on the blue-green band are suitable for oligotrophic or mesotrophic coastal waters, and the algorithm based on the blue-green band difference Chl-a index (DCI) has stronger anti-interference in terms of the effects of sun glint and bottom reflectance than the algorithm based on the blue-green ratio (BGr); (3) in the case of ignoring R_sg unrelated to inherent optical properties (IOPs), NAP is the biggest interference factor when >9.5 mg/L and the effect of bottom reflectance should be considered when the water depth (H) <5 m in SYB; and (4) the inherent optical properties of the waters in SYB are dominated by NAP (Chl-a = 0.2–2.6 ug/L and NAP = 2.2–30.1 mg/L), and the nutrients are concentrated by enclosed terrain and southeast current. This semi-empirical algorithm for Chl-a concentration retrieval has the potential to monitor Chl-a in oligotrophic and mesotrophic coastal waters using other land observation satellites (e.g., Landsat8 OLI, ASTER, and GaoFen2).

The attention towards links of atmospheric parameter variation and earthquakes has increased exponentially by utilizing new methods and more accurate observations. Persistent research makes it possible to gain insight into the precursor mechanism of earthquakes. In this paper, we studied the universality of detecting atmospheric anomalies associated with earthquakes based on tidal force fluctuation in China for earthquakes of Ms > 6.0, and explored the influence of tidal force on tectonic stress. The data of air temperature, geopotential height, ozone mixing ratio, and relative humidity from the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) were analyzed to reveal the spatiotemporal variation of atmospheric anomalies at multiple isobaric surfaces. Furthermore, the coupling of atmospheric parameters was investigated. The results showed that continuous solicitation exerted by tidal forces could change the strength of tectonic stress that causes earthquakes. The evolution pattern of air temperature, geopotential height, and relative humidity could be supported by atmospheric thermal vertical diffusion, while the anomalies of ozone mixing ratio was not evident. This verified the feasibility of detecting multi-parameter atmospheric anomalies associated with earthquakes based on tidal force fluctuation. Our results provide more evidence for understanding the atmospheric precursor characteristics of earthquakes.