Thermography for soil salinity assessment

Increased soil salinity is a significant agricultural problem that decreases yields for common crops. It is quite dynamic in time, which makes timely soil salinity data a crucial point in agricultural management. Remote sensing can provide the necessary spatial and temporal resolution, but widely accepted methods and techniques for soil salinity monitoring using remote sensing are not present yet. Canopy temperature change is one of the stress indicators in plants. Its behaviour in response to salt stress on individual plant level is well studied, but its potential for field or landscape scale studies is not investigated yet. In this study, potential of satellite and UAV thermography for plot, regional and global scale soil salinity assessment was investigated. The results demonstrated that using thermography for soil salinity monitoring is a valuable approach. It proved to be more universal, compared with previously used approaches, like vegetation indices. The universality has been reflected both in the diverse soil and vegetation conditions, under which the thermography approach was tested.