Comparing Sentinel-2 MSI and Landsat 8 OLI in soil salinity detection: a case study of agricultural lands in coastal North Carolina

This study presents the first comparison of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument (MSI) in identifying soil salinity using soil physiochemical, spectral, statistical, and image analysis techniques. By the end of the century, intermediate sea level rise scenarios project approximately 1.3 meters of sea level rise along the coast of the southeastern United States. One of the most vulnerable areas is Hyde County, North Carolina, where 1140 km2 of agricultural lands are being salinized, endangering 4,200 people and $40 million USD of property. To determine the best multispectral sensor to map the extent of salinization, this study compared the feasibility of OLI and MSI to estimate electrical conductivity (EC). The EC of field samples were correlated with handheld spectrometer spectra resampled into multispectral sensor bands. Using an iterative ordinary least squares regression, it was found that EC was sensitive to OLI bands 2 (452 nm – 512 nm) and 4 (636 nm – 673 nm) and MSI bands 2 (457.5 nm – 522.5 nm) and 4 (650 nm – 680 nm). Respectively, the R2Adj and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.04–0.54 and 1.15 for OLI, and 0.05–0.67 and 1.17 for MSI, suggests that the two sensors have similar salinity modelling skill. The extracted saline soils make up approximately 1,703 hectares for OLI and 118 hectares for MSI, indicating overestimation from the OLI image due to its coarser spatial resolution. Additionally, field samples indicate that nearby vegetated land is saline, indicating an underestimation of total impacted land. As sea levels rise, accurately monitoring soil salinization will be critical to protecting coastal agricultural lands. MSI’s spatial and temporal resolution makes it superior to OLI for salinity tracking though they have roughly equivalent spectral resolutions. This study demonstrates that visible spectral bands are sensitive to soil salinity with the Blue and Red spectral ranges producing the highest model accuracy; however, the low accuracies for both sensors indicate the need of narrowband sensors. The HyspIRI to be launched in the early 2020s by NASA may provide ideal data source in soil salinity studies.