Soil moisture products acquired from passive satellite missions have been widely applied in environmental processes. A primary challenge for the use of soil moisture products from passive sensors is their reliability. It is crucial to evaluate the reliability of those products before they can be routinely used at a global scale. In this paper, we evaluated the Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) and the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR2) radiometer soil moisture products against in situ measurements collected from American networks with four statistics, including the mean difference (MD), the root mean squared difference (RMSD), the unbiased root mean square error (ubRMSE) and the correlation coefficient (R). The evaluation results of SMAP and AMSR2 soil moisture products were compared. Moreover, the triple collocation (TC) error model was used to assess the error among AMSR2, SMAP and in situ data. The monthly average and daily AMSR2 and SMAP soil moisture data were analyzed. Different spatial series, temporal series and combined spatial-temporal analysis were carried out. The results reveal that SMAP soil moisture retrievals are generally better than AMSR2 soil moisture data. The remotely sensed retrievals show the best agreement with in situ measurements over the central Great Plains and cultivated crops throughout the year. In particular, SMAP soil moisture data shows a stable pattern for capturing the spatial distribution of surface soil moisture. Further studies are required for better understanding the SMAP soil moisture product.

Landslides are a common and costly geological hazard, with regular occurrences leading to significant damage and losses. To effectively manage land use and reduce the risk of landslides, it is crucial to conduct susceptibility assessments. To date, many machine-learning methods have been applied to the landslide susceptibility map (LSM). However, as a risk prediction, landslide susceptibility without good interpretability would be a risky approach to apply these methods to real life. This study aimed to assess the LSM in the region of Nayong in Guizhou, China, and conduct a comprehensive assessment and evaluation of landslide susceptibility maps utilizing an explainable artificial intelligence. This study incorporates remote sensing data, field surveys, geographic information system techniques, and interpretable machine-learning techniques to analyze the sensitivity to landslides and to contrast it with other conventional models. As an interpretable machine-learning method, generalized additive models with structured interactions (GAMI-net) could be used to understand how LSM models make decisions. The results showed that the GAMI-net model was valid and had an area under curve (AUC) value of 0.91 on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, which is better than the values of 0.85 and 0.81 for the random forest and SVM models, respectively. The coal mining, rock desertification, and rainfall greater than 1300 mm were more susceptible to landslides in the study area. Additionally, the pairwise interaction factors, such as rainfall and mining, lithology and rainfall, and rainfall and elevation, also increased the landslide susceptibility. The results showed that interpretable models could accurately predict landslide susceptibility and reveal the causes of landslide occurrence. The GAMI-net-based model exhibited good predictive capability and significantly increased model interpretability to inform landslide management and decision making, which suggests its great potential for application in LSM.

Accurate soil moisture retrieval of a large area in high resolution is significant for plateau pasture. The object of this paper is to investigate the estimation of volumetric soil moisture in vegetated areas of plateau pasture using fully polarimetric C-band RADARSAT-2 SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) images. Based on the water cloud model, Chen model, and Dubois model, we proposed two developed algorithms for soil moisture retrieval and validated their performance using experimental data. We eliminated the effect of vegetation cover by using the water cloud model and minimized the effect of soil surface roughness by solving the Dubois equations. Two experimental campaigns were conducted in the Qinghai Lake watershed, northeastern Tibetan Plateau in September 2012 and May 2013, respectively, with simultaneous satellite overpass. Compared with the developed Chen model, the predicted soil moisture given by the developed Dubois model agreed better with field measurements in terms of accuracy and stability. The RMSE, R², and RPD value of the developed Dubois model were (5.4, 0.8, 1.6) and (3.05, 0.78, 1.74) for the two experiments, respectively. Validation results indicated that the developed Dubois model, needing a minimum of prior information, satisfied the requirement for soil moisture inversion in the study region.

Soil salinization is a critical and global environmental problem. Effectively mapping and monitoring the spatial distribution of soil salinity is essential. The main aim of this work was to map soil salinity in Shandong Province located on the Yellow River Delta of China using Sentinel-1/2 remote sensing data and digital elevation model (DEM) data, coupled with soil sampling data, and combined with four regression models: support vector regression (SVR), stepwise multi-regression (SMR), partial least squares regression (PLSR) and random forest regression (RFR). For these purposes, 60 soil samples were collected during the field survey conducted from 9 to 14 October 2019, corresponding to the Sentinel-1/2 and DEM data. Then we established a soil salinity and feature dataset based on the sampled data and the features extracted from Sentinel-1/2 and DEM data. This study adopted the feature importance of the RF model to screen all features. The results showed that the CRSI index made the greatest contribution in retrieving soil salinity in this region. In this paper, 18 sampling points were used to validate and compare the performance of the four models. The results reveal that, compared with the other regression models, the PLSR model has the best performance (R² = 0.66, and RMSE = 1.30). Finally, the PLSR method was used to predict the spatial distribution of soil salinity in the Yellow River Delta. We concluded that the model can be used effectively for the quantitative estimation of soil salinity and provides a useful tool for ecological construction.

Rice growth monitoring is very important as rice is one of the staple crops of the world. Rice variables as quantitative indicators of rice growth are critical for farming management and yield estimation, and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has great advantages for monitoring rice variables due to its all-weather observation capability. In this study, eight temporal RADARSAT-2 full-polarimetric SAR images were acquired during rice growth cycle and a modified water cloud model (MWCM) was proposed, in which the heterogeneity of the rice canopy in the horizontal direction and its phenological changes were considered when the double-bounce scattering between the rice canopy and the underlying surface was firstly considered as well. Then, three scattering components from an improved polarimetric decomposition were coupled with the MWCM, instead of the backscattering coefficients. Using a genetic algorithm, eight rice variables were estimated, such as the leaf area index (LAI), rice height (h), and the fresh and dry biomass of ears (F_e and D_e). The accuracy validation showed the MWCM was suitable for the estimation of rice variables during the whole growth season. The validation results showed that the MWCM could predict the temporal behaviors of the rice variables well during the growth cycle (R² > 0.8). Compared with the original water cloud model (WCM), the relative errors of rice variables with the MWCM were much smaller, especially in the vegetation phase (approximately 15% smaller). Finally, it was discussed that the MWCM could be used, theoretically, for extensive applications since the empirical coefficients in the MWCM were determined in general cases, but more applications of the MWCM are necessary in future work.

The Sentinel-1 constellation can provide numerous high-resolution C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data with long-term continuity and freely, thus showing a cost-effective solution for the coastal monitoring at high or moderate spatial resolutions. The major goal is to improve estimates of shallow water depth for SAR applications. We present an algorithm that is based on the linear dispersion relation between water depth and swell parameters like swell wavelength, direction, and period to estimate shallow water depth using multitemporal SAR data with a short repeating cycle. This is accomplished via circular convolution and Kalman filter that provides both the estimates and a measure of their uncertainty at each location. The introduced algorithm is tested on four Sentinel-1 interferometric wide swath (IW) mode SAR images over the coastal region of Fujian Province, China. The retrieved water depth both from multitemporal SAR images and different single SAR images show general agreement with water depth from an official electronic navigational chart. All comparisons indicate that the proposed method is feasible and multitemporal SAR data have great potential in bathymetric surveying.