Digital soil mapping in a Himalayan watershed using remote sensing and terrain parameters employing artificial neural network model

Digital soil mapping relies on field observations, laboratory measurements and remote sensing data, integrated with quantitative methods to map spatial patterns of soil properties. The study was undertaken in a hilly watershed in the Indian Himalayan region of Mandi district, Himachal Pradesh for mapping soil nutrients by employing artificial neural network (ANN), a potent data mining technique. Soil samples collected from the surface layer (0-15 cm) of 75 locations in the watershed, through grid sampling approach during the fallow period of November 2015, were preprocessed and analysed for various soil nutrients like soil organic carbon (SOC), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Spectral indices like Colouration Index, Brightness Index, Hue Index and Redness Index derived from Landsat 8 satellite data and terrain parameters such as Terrain Wetness Index, Stream Power Index and slope using CartoDEM (30 m) were used. Spectral and terrain indices sensitive to different nutrients were identified using correlation analysis and thereafter used for predictive modelling of nutrients using ANN technique by employing feed-forward neural network with backpropagation network architecture and Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithm. The prediction of SOC was obtained with an R-2 of 0.83 and mean squared error (MSE) of 0.05, whereas for available nitrogen, it was achieved with an R-2 value of 0.62 and MSE of 0.0006. The prediction accuracy for phosphorus was low, since the phosphorus content in the area was far below the normal P values of typical Indian soils and thus the R-2 value observed was only 0.511. The attempts to develop prediction models for available potassium (K) and clay (%) failed to give satisfactory results. The developed models were validated using independent data sets and used for mapping the spatial distribution of SOC and N in the watershed.