Table 6: Areas of degradation level by index.
LEVEL OF
DEGRADATION
NDVI MSAVI2 DSWI NDGI MSI BI
CRUST
INDEX
TI
CUIRASS
INDEX
RI
COLOUR
INDEX
GSI NDSI
Lower 47347,15 116895,5 12232,53 51141,44 56785,6 20022,04 44050,68 436,12 34703,46 12455,87 42013,35 9303 45373,94
Moderate to low 65710,8 307273,49 43821,77 77454,57 73233,53 131856,39 75252,17 189099,23 114273,9 30834,54 103409,8 36286,48 66397,32
Moderate 310022,07 9348,34 65791,41 132378,86 122002,11 314392,22 169496,11 161940,13 166788,83 66436,07 134027,8 77362,84 310755,2
High to moderate 10351,48 15298,62 142606,5 213842,42 190128,43 8575,23 179840,75 61304,64 132939,34 196491,09 178548,4 227054,85 10428,33
Higher 41426,95 26042,49 210406,3 41,15 32708,78 15,46 6218,72 62076,68 26152,92 168640,87 16859,07 124851,26 41903,57
TOTAL 474858,45 474858,44 474858,5 474858,44 474858,45 474861,34 474858,43 474856,8 474858,45 474858,44 474858,4 474858,43 474858,4
The method adopted to answer this concern is
inspired by (Ngandam et al. 2016), which consists of
classifying the indices by class of degradation and
identifying the influence of the indices according to
their spatial distribution by class (Table 6). For the
"Higher" level, the top five indices with the largest
spatial distributions are in decreasing order, DSWI
(210,406.3 hectares), RI (168,640.87 hectares), GSI
(124,851.26 hectares), TI (62,076.68 hectares), and
NDSI (41,903.57 hectares). As a result, the "Higher"
level is explained by bare soils where vegetation has
completely disappeared, the low rate of iron in the soil,
the coarse texture of the surface particles, and high
salinity. For the "High to moderate" level, the GSI,
NDGI, RI, MSI, and crust index with respectively
227,054.85 hectares, 213,842.42 hectares, 196,491.09
hectares, 190,128.43 hectares, 179,840.75 hectares are
the most indicative. This means that the soils of this
class are also characterized by the coarse texture of the
particles on the surface, but also by the weak greenery
of the vegetation, an important crusting, and low
moisture and iron contents.
The following indices: brightness (314,392.22
hectares), salinity (310,755.2 hectares), chlorophyll
(310,022.07 hectares), crust (169,496.11 hectares)
and cuirass (166,788.83 hectares) are the most
influential for the "Moderate" level. The soils of this
class are clear and salty, weakly covered with
vegetation, and compact on their surfaces.
A good vegetation cover of the soil, the fine texture
of the soil particles, dark soils, weakly cuirassed,
characterizes the "Moderate to low" level that covers
the open waters of the lake, marshland areas, and part
of the immediate and intermediate shores and which
contain organic matter in significant quantities.
Indeed, in this class, the MSAVI2 with 307,273.49
hectares is the most widespread index followed by TI
189,099.23 hectares, BI 131,856.39 hectares, cuirass
index 114,273.9 hectares, and color index 103,409.8
hectares. In the "Lower" class, which occupies open
water and marshland, the influence of vegetation
indices is the most important (MSAVI2 116,895.5
hectares, NDGI 51,141.44 hectares, NDVI 47,347.15
hectares), the soil moisture is high (MSI 56,785.6
hectares), and their salinity rate is low (the NDSI
45,373.94 hectares).
3.2 Validation of Results
A confusion matrix was used to validate the results
obtained by a comparison with the existing map of the
land degradation status of the far north region of
Cameroon, provided by (Ngandam et al. 2016). A
subset containing the main characteristic of the study
area was used, i.e., the permanent open water, the
marshland, the immediate shores, the external shores,
and the hinterland.
So, the confusion matrix performed provided the
information for verification and accuracy assessment
between our results with the ground truth map. The
overall accuracy which represents in percent the
number of correctly classified values divided by the
total numbers of values is 54.3%, and the kappa
coefficient which assesses how much better the
classification is than a random classification has a
value of 40.49%.
4 CONCLUSION
The present work was based on laboratory tests
applied to sentinel 2A satellite images. The purpose
was to model the risk of soil degradation in Sahelian
regions by combining spectral indices with statistical
analyses. The results are highly correlated to some
factors as the phenological season of satellite image
acquisition, the quality of the images, the formula of
the indices used, and the applied statistical treatments.
Also, statistical analysis was applied to the
resulting image giving on one hand the correlation
and determination coefficients of each index, and on
the other hand, the factorial axes which summarize
more information. All indices are considered
statistically significant (P-value < 0.0001). The first
two factors of PCA and factorial analysis explain