Monitoring the combined effects of drought and salinity stress on crops using remote sensing in the Netherlands

[摘要] Global sustainable agricultural systems are under threat,due to increasing and co-occurring drought and salinity stresses. Combinedeffects of these stresses on agricultural crops have traditionally beenevaluated in small-scale experimental studies. Consequently, large-scalestudies need to be performed to increase our understanding and assessment ofthe combined impacts in agricultural practice in real-life scenarios. Thisstudy aims to provide a new monitoring approach using remote-sensingobservations to evaluate the joint impacts of drought and salinity on croptraits. In our tests over the Netherlands at large spatial scale (138.74 km 2 ), we calculated five functional traits for both maize and potatofrom Sentinel-2 observations, namely leaf area index (LAI), the fraction ofabsorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR), the fraction ofvegetation cover (FVC), leaf chlorophyll content (Cab), and leaf watercontent (Cw). Individual and combined effects of the stresses on theseasonal dynamics in crop traits were determined using both one-way andtwo-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs). We found that both stresses (individual and co-occurring)affected the functional traits of both crops significantly (with R 2 ranging from 0.326 to 0.796) though with stronger sensitivities to droughtthan to salinity. While we found exacerbating effects within co-occurrentstresses, the impact level depended strongly on the moment in the growingseason. For both crops, LAI, FAPAR, and FVC dropped the most under severedrought stress conditions. The patterns for Cab and Cw were more inhibitedby co-occurring drought and salinity. Consequently, our study constitutes away towards evaluating drought and salinity impacts in agriculture, with thepossibility of potential large-scale application for sustainable foodsecurity.

[学科分类] 妇产科学