Soil Salinity Mapping and Hydrological Drought Indices Assessment in Arid Environments Based on Remote Sensing Techniques
Abstract. Vegetation indices are mostly described as crop water derivatives. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is one of the oldest remote sensing applications that widely used to evaluate crop vigor directly and crop water relationships indirectly. Recently, several NDVI derivatives are exclusively used to assess crop water relationships. Four hydrological drought indices are examined in the current research study. Water Supply Vegetation Index (WSVI), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), Moisture Stress Index (MSI) and Normalized Difference Infrared Index (NDII) are implemented in the current study as an indirect tool to map the effect of different soil salinity level on crop water stress in arid environments. In arid environments; such as Saudi Arabia, water resources are under pressure especially groundwater levels. Groundwater wells are rapidly depleted due to the heavy abstraction of the reserved water. Heavy abstractions of groundwater; which exceed crop water requirements in most of the cases are powered by high evaporation rates in the designated study area because of the long days of extremely hot summer. Landsat OLI-8 data were extensively used in the current research to obtain several vegetation indices in response to soil salinity in Wadi Ad-Waser. Principal Component Analysis and Artificial Neural Network Analysis are complementary tools to understand the regression pattern of the hydrological drought indices in the designated study area.