Semi-blind source separation for the estimation of the clay content over semi-vegetated areas using VNIR/SWIR hyperspectral airborne data

Our results showed poor prediction performances for both approaches when applied to all pixels; however, a slight improvement was observed when correcting the bias prediction that occurs when using the PLSR model. Conversely, satisfactory prediction performances were obtained by restricting the prediction to the weakly vegetated area (NDVI < 0.55) that covered 63% of the study area. The resulting clay map over this restricted vegetated area exhibited patterns of variations that matched the previous expertise acquired on the spatial structures of soils in this area.