Estimation of average long-term soil salinity of arable land Golodnaya Steppe in Kazakhstan

Abstract

In the Syr-Darya River basin on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan there is an irrigation massif “Golodnaya Steppe”. In its Kazakh part, the agricultural procedure of winter washing of fields is practiced for cleaning from secondary salinization. It is carried out in January-February by flooding saline fields. At the same time, water mirrors are formed on the arable land, which can be recorded using satellite data. In this study, based on satellite information from Landsat 8,9 and Sentinel 1,2 for the period January-February 2016-2022, masks of water mirrors were created, located on irrigated arable land in winter. These masks diagnose seasonal farmers’ activity on cleaning arable land from secondary salinization. Analysis of the field washing frequency in the period 2016-2022 allowed to estimate the average long-term salinity of irrigated arable land in the analyzed region. The data obtained are of interest for the zoning of the territory of the irrigation massif “Golodnaya Steppe” in Kazakhstan according to the level of secondary salinization, which is important for optimizing the work to improve the irrigation and drainage infrastructure.