Spatiotemporal Patterns of Soil Salinity in Jhang District (2015-2025)

Abstract

Water logging and salinity are major problems to agricultural practices across the globe especially in agrarian developing nations like Pakistan. The central question of the research was to assess the effect of waterlogging and salinity on the yielding of popular crops in District Jhang between 2015 and 2025. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) provided the data of remote sensing at Landsat 8 in October 2015 and in October 2025, having a 30-meter spatial resolution, free of charge. This study was based on calculating different spectral indices using Landsat reflectance bands and GIS, along with remote sensing. The Soil Salinity Index (SSI) was used to evaluate the level of salinity, as well as its impact on crop production in the study area. Vegetation health was measured by the Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI). In 2015, the values of SAVI varied between -0.135285 and 0.538007 whereas in 2025 they varied between -0.110472 and 0.49923, showing that there is a change in the values with time. The SAVI maps indicate that the most values of vegetation are concentrated in the eastern and southeastern areas of the district, and the central and western area represents a low vegetation vigor. Likewise, the salinity maps show that the eastern and southeastern areas have more salinity as compared to the central and western areas, which are relatively less salty. In general, the results show that there were evident spatial and temporal differences in soil salinity and vegetation health in District Jhang.