Prediction of Soil Salinity Using Near-Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy with Nonnegative Matrix Factorization.

As a key, yet difficult, issue currently in the quantitative remote sensing analysis of soil, the accurate and stable monitoring of soil salinity content (SSC) in situ should be studied and improved. The purpose of this study is to explore the method of fusing spectra outdoors with spectra indoors and improve the estimation precision of SSC based on near-infrared (NIR) reflectance hyper-spectra. First, samples of saline soil from the Yellow River delta of China were collected and analyzed. We measured three groups of sample spectra using a spectrometer: (1) situ-spectra, measured at sampling points in situ; (2) out-spectra, measured outdoors on air-dried samples; and, (3) lab-spectra, measured in a dark laboratory with the above air-dried samples. Second, four algorithms (multiplicative update, alternating least-squares, sparse affine non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), and gradient projection algorithms) of NMF were used to fuse the situ-spectra or out-spectra with the lab-spectra for the calibratio...