Inversion of Soil Moisture on Farmland Areas Based on SSA-CNN Using Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data

Soil moisture is a crucial factor in the field of meteorology, hydrology, and agricultural sciences. In agricultural production, surface soil moisture (SSM) is crucial for crop yield estimation and drought monitoring. For SSM inversion, a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) offers a trustworthy data source. However, for agricultural fields, the use of SAR data alone to invert SSM is susceptible to the influence of vegetation cover. In this paper, based on Sentinel-1 microwave remote sensing data and Sentinel-2 optical remote sensing data, a convolution neural network optimized by sparrow search algorithm (SSA-CNN) was suggested to invert farmland SSM. The feature parameters were first extracted from pre-processed remote sensing data. Then, the correlation analysis between the extracted feature parameters and field measured SSM data was carried out, and the optimal combination of feature parameters for SSM inversion was selected as the input data of the subsequent models. To enhance the performance of the CNN, the hyper-parameters of CNN were optimized using SSA, and the SSA-CNN model was built for SSM inversion based on the obtained optimal hyper-parameter combination. Three typical machine learning approaches, including generalized regression neural network, random forest, and CNN, were used for comparison to show the efficacy of the suggested method. With an average coefficient of determination of 0.80, an average root mean square error of 2.17 vol.%, and an average mean absolute error of 1.68 vol.%, the findings demonstrated that the SSA-CNN model with the optimal feature combination had a better accuracy among the 4 models. In the end, the SSM of the study region was inverted throughout four phenological periods using the SSA-CNN model. The inversion results indicated that the suggested method performed well in local situations.

Automated summary

Soil moisture is essential in meteorology, hydrology, and agricultural sciences. This study proposes a SSA-CNN model based on Sentinel-1 microwave remote sensing data and Sentinel-2 optical remote sensing data for inverting farmland soil moisture. The model achieved better accuracy compared to other machine learning approaches with an average coefficient of determination of 0.80, an average root mean square error of 2.17 vol.%, and an average mean absolute error of 1.68 vol.%. The inversion results using the SSA-CNN model demonstrated good performance in local situations.