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Fluctuating soil salinity across natural and managed landscapes of the coastal mid-Atlantic facing rapid sea-level rise

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Abstract

The coastal mid-Atlantic region of the United States is increasingly vulnerable to soil salinization, primarily driven by sea-level rise and powerful coastal storms, posing a threat to farmland productivity, and ecological stability. However, the spatially heterogeneous nature of salinization across different land covers makes it challenging to monitor their interactions across large areas and longer time periods. To address this gap, we combined remote sensing-based land cover classification with modeled soil salinity data to assess landscape-scale dynamics across the Delmarva Peninsula from 2000 to 2016. Using a Random Forest classifier trained on Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC)-derived synthetic Landsat surface reflectance, we generated gridded land cover datasets for five years (2000, 2002, 2005, 2009, and 2016) to match and compare with the existing Global Soil Salinity Maps. Overall, forests and other vegetation expanded, whereas farmland and bare soil declined. Salinization trend across these land covers is neither uniformly optimistic nor categorically alarming. Our results showed that over 75% of Delmarva remained in the non-saline category in those 5 years, increasing by 1,138 km², and extremely saline zones declined by 833 km². More than 83% of land cover transitions occurred without changing salinity categories, while 7–11% moved to a lower salinity category. Our findings based on these temporal snapshots reveal fluctuations in salinity across different land covers, underscoring the value of multi-temporal remote sensing for continuous monitoring of salinity-driven land changes.

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Data availability

The multi-temporal land cover dataset for the Delmarva Peninsula (2000, 2002, 2005, 2009, 2016) at 30 m resolution are available via a public repository84.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the logistical support provided by the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy and Dr. Kate Tully’s research group at the University of Maryland during field data collection.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration EPSCoR Grant DE-80NSSC20M0220 awarded to P.M. and R.V. We acknowledge the financial support provided to P.M. by the State of Maryland and Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology. P.M. and M.S. were partially supported by the National Science Foundation EPSCoR Grant Award: Collaborative Research: RII FEC: Risks, Impacts, & Strategies for Coastal Communities: Advancing Convergent Science to Support Climate Change Adaptation & Resilience, Award #s: 2418394, 2418395, 2418396.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716, USA

    Manan Sarupria & Pinki Mondal

  2. Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716, USA

    Rodrigo Vargas & Pinki Mondal

  3. School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85281, USA

    Rodrigo Vargas

  4. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, 94035, USA

    Taejin Park

  5. Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, Moffett Field, CA, 94035, USA

    Taejin Park

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  1. Manan Sarupria
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  2. Rodrigo Vargas
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  4. Pinki Mondal
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Contributions

M.S. conceived the study, carried out the primary research, collected and processed the data, developed the models, and wrote the main manuscript text. R.V., T.P., and P.M. contributed to the development of the methodological framework, supervising and providing critical feedback on the manuscript. T.P. provided technical guidance and training on specialized methods. All authors reviewed the manuscript, contributed to revisions, and approved the final version for publication.

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Manan Sarupria.

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Sarupria, M., Vargas, R., Park, T. et al. Fluctuating soil salinity across natural and managed landscapes of the coastal mid-Atlantic facing rapid sea-level rise.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-45611-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-45611-0

Keywords

  • Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC)
  • Delmarva Peninsula
  • Land cover change
  • Saltwater intrusion
  • Soil salinity

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