Remote sensing of soil degradation: Progress and perspective

Abstract

Soils constitute one of the most critical natural resources and maintaining their health is vital for agricultural development and ecological sustainability, providing many essential ecosystem services. Driven by climatic variations and anthropogenic activities, soil degradation has become a global issue that seriously threatens the ecological environment and food security. Remote sensing (RS) technologies have been widely used to investigate soil degradation as it is highly efficient, time-saving, and broad-scope. This review encompasses recent advances and the state-of-the-art of ground, proximal, and novel RS techniques in soil degradation-related studies. We reviewed the RS-related indicators that could be used for monitoring soil degradation-related properties. The direct indicators (mineral composition, organic matter, surface roughness, and moisture content of soil) and indirect proxies (vegetation condition and land use/land cover change) for evaluating soil degradation were comprehensively summarized. The results suggest that these above indicators are effective for monitoring soil degradation, however, no indicators system has been established for soil degradation monitoring to date. We also discussed the RS's mechanisms, data, and methods for identifying specific soil degradation-related phenomena (e.g., soil erosion, salinization, desertification, and contamination). We investigated the potential relations between soil degradation and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and also discussed the challenges and prospective use of RS for assessing soil degradation. To further advance and optimize technology, analysis and retrieval methods, we identify critical future research needs and directions: (1) multi-scale analysis of soil degradation; (2) availability of RS data; (3) soil degradation process modelling and prediction; (4) shared soil degradation dataset; (5) decision support systems; and (6) rehabilitation of degraded soil resource and the contribution of RS technology. Because it is difficult to monitor or measure all soil properties in the large scale, remotely sensed characterization of soil properties related to soil degradation is particularly important. Although it is not a silver bullet, RS provides unique benefits for soil degradation-related studies from regional to global scales.