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Estimating soil salinity over a shallow saline water table in semiarid Tunisia

Bouksila, Fethi ; Persson, Magnus LU ; Berndtsson, Ronny LU orcid and Bahri, Akica (2010) In Open Hydrology Journal 4. p.91-101
Abstract
Rapid and reliable observations of soil electrical conductivity are essential in order to maintain sustainable irrigated agriculture. Direct measurement of the electrical conductivity of saturated soil paste (ECe), however, is tedious and
time consuming. Therefore, there are needs to find efficient indirect methods to predict the soil salinity from other readily available observations. In this paper we explore the application of multiple linear regression (MLR) and artificial neural networks (ANN) to predict ECe variation from easily measured soil and groundwater properties under highly complex and heterogeneous field conditions in semiarid Tunisia. We compare two methods for dividing the data set into training and validation sub-sets;... (More)
Rapid and reliable observations of soil electrical conductivity are essential in order to maintain sustainable irrigated agriculture. Direct measurement of the electrical conductivity of saturated soil paste (ECe), however, is tedious and
time consuming. Therefore, there are needs to find efficient indirect methods to predict the soil salinity from other readily available observations. In this paper we explore the application of multiple linear regression (MLR) and artificial neural networks (ANN) to predict ECe variation from easily measured soil and groundwater properties under highly complex and heterogeneous field conditions in semiarid Tunisia. We compare two methods for dividing the data set into training and validation sub-sets; a statistical (SD) and a random data set division (RD), and their effect on model performance. The input variables were chosen from the plot coordinates, groundwater table properties (depth, electrical conductivity, piezometric level), and soil particle size at 5 depths. The results obtained with ANN and MLR indicate that the statistical properties of data in the training and validation sets need to be taken into account to ensure that optimal model performance is achieved. The SD can be considered as a solution to resolve the problem of over-fitting a model when using ANN. For the SD, the determination coefficient (R 2 ) when using an ANN model varied from 0.85 to 0.88 and the root mean square error from 1.23 to 1.80 dS m -1 . Because of the complexity of the field soil salinity process and the spatial variability of the data, this clearly indicates the potential to use ANN models to predict ECe. (Less)
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author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
Open Hydrology Journal
volume
4
pages
91 - 101
publisher
Bentham Open
ISSN
1874-3781
DOI
10.2174/1874378101004010091
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
cbadfdd8-db48-4ae0-b7a2-b8d6f249f6f9 (old id 1757133)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 09:24:47
date last changed
2023-08-23 02:47:39
@article{cbadfdd8-db48-4ae0-b7a2-b8d6f249f6f9,
  abstract     = {{Rapid and reliable observations of soil electrical conductivity are essential in order to maintain sustainable irrigated agriculture. Direct measurement of the electrical conductivity of saturated soil paste (ECe), however, is tedious and<br/>time consuming. Therefore, there are needs to find efficient indirect methods to predict the soil salinity from other readily available observations. In this paper we explore the application of multiple linear regression (MLR) and artificial neural networks (ANN) to predict ECe variation from easily measured soil and groundwater properties under highly complex and heterogeneous field conditions in semiarid Tunisia. We compare two methods for dividing the data set into training and validation sub-sets; a statistical (SD) and a random data set division (RD), and their effect on model performance. The input variables were chosen from the plot coordinates, groundwater table properties (depth, electrical conductivity, piezometric level), and soil particle size at 5 depths. The results obtained with ANN and MLR indicate that the statistical properties of data in the training and validation sets need to be taken into account to ensure that optimal model performance is achieved. The SD can be considered as a solution to resolve the problem of over-fitting a model when using ANN. For the SD, the determination coefficient (R 2 ) when using an ANN model varied from 0.85 to 0.88 and the root mean square error from 1.23 to 1.80 dS m -1 . Because of the complexity of the field soil salinity process and the spatial variability of the data, this clearly indicates the potential to use ANN models to predict ECe.}},
  author       = {{Bouksila, Fethi and Persson, Magnus and Berndtsson, Ronny and Bahri, Akica}},
  issn         = {{1874-3781}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{91--101}},
  publisher    = {{Bentham Open}},
  series       = {{Open Hydrology Journal}},
  title        = {{Estimating soil salinity over a shallow saline water table in semiarid Tunisia}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1874378101004010091}},
  doi          = {{10.2174/1874378101004010091}},
  volume       = {{4}},
  year         = {{2010}},
}