Huanjun Liu

Quantitative Analysis of Moisture Effect on Black Soil Reflectance

Several studies have demonstrated that soil reflectance decreases with increasing soil moisture content, or increases when the soil moisture reaches a certain content; however, there are few analyses on the quantitative relationship between soil reflectance and its moisture, especially in the case of black soils in northeast China. A new moisture adjusting method was developed to obtain soil reflectance with a smaller moisture interval to describe the quantitative relationship between soil reflectance and moisture. For the soil samples with moisture contents ranging from air-dry to saturated, the changes in soil reflectance with soil moisture can be depicted using a cubic equation. Both moisture threshold (MT) and moisture inflexion (MI) of soil reflectance can also be determined by the equation. When the moisture range was smaller than MT, soil reflectance can be simulated with a linear model. However, for samples with different soil organic matter (OM), the parameters of the linear model varied regularly with the OM content. Based on their relationship, the soil moisture can be estimated from soil reflectance in the black soil region.

Integration of multi-disciplinary geospatial data for delineating agroecosystem uniform management zones

Understanding agricultural ecosystems and their complex interactions with the environment is important for improving agricultural sustainability and environmental protection. Developing the necessary understanding requires approaches that integrate multi-source geospatial data and interdisciplinary relationships at different spatial scales. In order to identify and delineate landscape units representing relatively homogenous biophysical properties and eco-environmental functions at different spatial scales, a hierarchical system of uniform management zones (UMZ) is proposed. The UMZ hierarchy consists of seven levels of units at different spatial scales, namely site-specific, field, local, regional, country, continent, and globe. Relatively few studies have focused on the identification of the two middle levels of units in the hierarchy, namely the local UMZ (LUMZ) and the regional UMZ (RUMZ), which prevents true eco-environmental studies from being carried out across the full range of scales. This study presents a methodology to delineate LUMZ and RUMZ spatial units using land cover, soil, and remote sensing data. A set of objective criteria were defined and applied to evaluate the within-zone homogeneity and between-zone separation of the delineated zones. The approach was applied in a farming and forestry region in southeastern Ontario, Canada, and the methodology was shown to be objective, flexible, and applicable with commonly available spatial data. The hierarchical delineation of UMZs can be used as a tool to organize the spatial structure of agricultural landscapes, to understand spatial relationships between cropping practices and natural resources, and to target areas for application of specific environmental process models and place-based policy interventions.

Improving the spatial resolution and ecostratification of crop yield estimates in Canada

Du, Y., Huffman, T., Daneshfar, B., Green, M., Feng, F., Liu, J., Liu, T. and Liu, H. 2015. Improving the spatial resolution and ecostratification of crop yield estimates in Canada. Can. J. Soil Sci. 95: 287-297. Canadas terrestrial ecostratification framework provides nested spatial units for organizing national data related to soils, landforms and land use. In the agricultural domain, the lack of national, uniform crop yield data on the ecostratification framework severely hinders our ability to evaluate the biophysical data with respect to economic and climatic conditions. We developed a national crop yield database at the regional (ecodistrict) level by aggregating individual records of an existing but very broad-level sample-derived yield database according to the ecostratification hierarchy. Issues related to the different sampling frameworks and the need for confidentiality of individual records were resolved in order to generate an ecostratified crop yield dataset at a reasonably detailed spatial scale. Sixty crops were first statistically arranged into 37 agronomically similar crop groups in order to increase class size, and these crop groups were aggregated into increasingly large spatial units until confidentiality was assured. The methodology maintained data quality and confidentiality while producing crop yield estimates at the ecodistrict level. Comparison to independent crop insurance data confirmed that the resulting crop yield data are valid where estimates were derived from data released at the level of an ecodistrict or an ecoregion, but not at the ecoprovince level. Our crop yield estimates offer a reasonably high level of spatial precision while remaining within standard confidentiality constraints.

Selection of optimal combinations of inputs in a partial least squares model for prediction of soil organic matter

Abstract Partial least squares model is widely used in estimation of soil physical and chemical parameters such as soil organic matter and moisture content, due to its advantages in dealing with collinearity of variables like hyperspectral reflectance. However, it is hard to determine optimal combination of partial least squares model input for soil organic matter prediction since there are lots of possibilities such as, different mathematical transformation of spectral reflectance, wavelength ranges, and spectral resolution. Laboratory hyperspectral reflectance of soils in Songnen plain were analyzed in this study, and the orthogonal experimental design method for deriving optimal combination of input variables for soil organic matter prediction models was introduced. For intercalating orthogonal experimental design table, five different levels which commonly used by researchers were assigned to factors. Results show that the optimal combination input for single black soil is using the derivative logarithmic reciprocal reflectance in the wavelength range selected by multiple stepwise regression at a spectral resolution of 5 nm (R2= 0.95, RMSE = 0.21, and RPD = 4.49), and different soils is using continuum removed in the wavelength range selected by MSR at a spectral resolution of 5 nm (R2 = 0.77, RMSE = 0.74, and RPD = 2.08). With optimal combination input, the partial least squares model prediction ability was evaluated as excellent for single black soil, possible for different soils. This study illustrates the orthogonal experimental design method can be an effective way to identify the optimal input variables of a partial least squares model for soil organic matter prediction, and multiple stepwise regression can be a preprocessing step to reduce hyperspectral data redundancy before using partial least squares to predict soil organic matter. Overall, this study provides a new approach for determining optimal input of partial least squares predicting model.

Maximizing the relationship of yield to site-specific management zones with object-oriented segmentation of hyperspectral images

Quick and low cost delineation of site-specific management zones (SSMZ) would improve applications of precision agriculture. In this study, a new method for delineating SSMZ using object-oriented segmentation of airborne imagery was demonstrated. Three remote sensing domains—spectral, spatial, and temporal- are exploited to improve the SSMZ relationship to yield. Common vegetation indices (VI), and first and second derivatives (

Estimation of Cotton Yield Using the Reconstructed Time-Series Vegetation Index of Landsat Data

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Spatial trend simulation of regional urbanization level: A case study of the middle part of Liaoning province

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