Effects of multi-temporal environmental variables on SOC spatial
prediction models in coastal wetlands of a Chinese delta
Abstract
Mapping the SOC distributions in coastal wetlands plays an important
role in assessing ecosystem services, predicting the greenhouse effects
and investigating global carbon cycle. Few research has explored the
relationships of SOC and environmental variables with seasonal changes,
and the effects of multi-temporal environmental variables on Digital
Soil Mapping (DSM). The results showed that the relationships between
SOC and environmental variables in different months varied significantly
in coastal wetlands of the Yellow River Delta (YRD). In general, the
environmental variables in wet season showed stronger correlations and
higher importance scores with SOC compared with those in dry season. In
addition, SOC prediction models based on multi-temporal data in wet
season and mono-temporal data in April had stronger prediction
performance compared with those based on multi-temporal data in dry
season. As a result, data fusion of multi-temporal data did not
necessarily contribute to the model performance enhancement. Relative
homogenous soil-landscape attributes and spectral characteristics in
coastal wetlands of the YRD in dry season could not accurately explain
the strong spatial variation of SOC in this area, and it might be the
major reason that caused the stronger model performance of soil
prediction models based on wet season than those based on dry season.
Therefore, the accurate spatial prediction of soil properties requires
the characterization of the seasonal dynamics of soil-landscape
relationships. In general, the findings of this research demonstrated
that the selection of the environmental variables in the establishment
of DSM model should consider the seasonal effects of environmental
variables.