Spatial Estimation of Soil Organic Carbon Content Utilizing PlanetScope, Sentinel-2, and Sentinel-1 Data

The accurate prediction of soil organic carbon (SOC) is important for agriculture and land management. Methods using remote sensing data are helpful for estimating SOC in bare soils. To overcome the challenge of predicting SOC under vegetation cover, this study extracted spectral, radar, and topographic variables from multi-temporal optical satellite images (high-resolution PlanetScope and medium-resolution Sentinel-2), synthetic aperture radar satellite images (Sentinel-1), and digital elevation model, respectively, to estimate SOC content in arable soils in the Wuling Mountain region of Southwest China. These variables were modeled at four different spatial resolutions (3 m, 20 m, 30 m, and 80 m) using the eXtreme Gradient Boosting algorithm. The results showed that modeling resolution, the combination of multi-source remote sensing data, and temporal phases all influenced SOC prediction performance. The models generally yielded better results at a medium (20 m) modeling resolution than at fine (3 m) and coarse (80 m) resolutions. The combination of PlanetScope, Sentinel-2, and topography factors gave satisfactory predictions for dry land (R2 = 0.673, MAE = 0.107%, RMSE = 0.135%). The addition of Sentinel-1 indicators gave the best predictions for paddy field (R2 = 0.699, MAE = 0.114%, RMSE = 0.148%). The values of R2 of the optimal models for paddy field and dry land improved by 36.0% and 33.4%, respectively, compared to that for the entire study area. The optical images in winter played a dominant role in the prediction of SOC for both paddy field and dry land. This study offers valuable insights into effectively modeling soil properties under vegetation cover at various scales using multi-source and multi-temporal remote sensing data.