Weighted Variable Optimization-Based Method for Estimating Soil Salinity Using Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data: A Case Study in the Weiku Oasis, Xinjiang, China

Soil salinization is a significant global threat to sustainable agricultural development, with soil salinity serving as a crucial indicator for evaluating soil salinization. Remote sensing technology enables large-scale inversion of soil salinity, facilitating the monitoring and assessment of soil salinization levels, thus supporting the prevention and management of soil salinization. This study employs multi-source remote sensing data, selecting 8 radar polarization combinations, 10 spectral indices, and 3 topographic factors to form a feature variable dataset. By applying a normalized weighted variable optimization method, highly important feature variables are identified. AdaBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost machine learning methods are then used to develop soil salinity inversion models and evaluate their performance. The results indicate the following: (1) There is generally a strong correlation between radar polarization combinations and vegetation indices, and a very high correlation between various vegetation indices and the salinity index S3. (2) The top five feature variables, in order of importance, are Aspect, VH2, Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI), VH, and Vegetation Moisture Index (VMI). (3) The method of normalized weighted importance scoring effectively screens important variables, reducing the number of input feature variables while enhancing the model’s inversion accuracy. (4) Among the three machine learning models, CatBoost performs best overall in soil salt content (SSC) prediction. Combined with the top five feature variables, CatBoost achieves the highest prediction accuracy (R2 = 0.831, RMSE = 2.653, MAE = 1.034) in the prediction phase. This study provides insights for the further development and application of methods for collaborative inversion of soil salinity using multi-source remote sensing data.