Satellite Monitoring of Salinization of Irrigated Soils in Southern Kazakhstan

The results of approbation of new approach to monitoring soil salinization in irrigated massifs are presented. It is based on the indirect detection of soil salinization using long-term archive satellite data. The research was carried out by the example of irrigated lands in Maktaaral district, Turkestan oblast of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The frequency and terms of salt removal from soils were used as indicators of soil salinization level and were determined from the long-term (2016 to 2022) archive satellite data Sentinel-1,2 and Landsat-8. Information about the frequency of soil leaching from salts and the year of the last leaching allowed ranking fields by soil salinization degree. Comparison of the information obtained from the small-scale soil map with statistical data on field survey revealed a high similarity of soil salinization in the test region. The same approach may be used for other regions with irrigated soils subjected to secondary salinization. It does not require any additional adaptation and is based on simple algorithms of recognizing water surface by satellite data.