Intelligent Monitoring and Trend Analysis of Surface Soil Organic Carbon in the Black Soil Region Using Multi-Satellite and Field Sampling: A Case Study from Northeast China

The black soil region of northeast China is a critical global grain production base. The dynamic variations in soil organic carbon (SOC) are directly linked to the regional food security. To accurately monitor SOC content and evaluate the potential of integrating Landsat-9 and GF-1 satellite data for SOC inversion, we developed a machine learning framework that combines data from both satellite sources to model SOC. Using the typical black soil region of northeast China in the Tongken River Basin as the study area, we compared the MLR, PLSR, RF, and XGBoost algorithms. And XGBoost demonstrated the highest performance (R² = 0.9130; RMSE = 0.3834%). Based on the optimal model, SOC in the study area was projected from 2020 to 2024. The multi-year average SOC exhibited an initial increase followed by a subsequent decline, with an overall increase of 22.78%. Spearman correlation analysis identified parent material as the dominant factor controlling SOC variation at the watershed scale (correlation coefficient = 0.38) while also modulating the influence of land use types on SOC dynamics. The "space-ground" multi-source collaborative inversion framework developed in this study offers a high-precision technical approach for the monitoring of SOC in black soil regions.