Dynamics of Soil Salinity in Irrigation Areas in South Kazakhstan

The analysis has been conducted of possibility of determining the extent of soil salinity by indirect and direct decoding of satellite images Pleiades 1A / 1B (in the year of survey) and LANDSATTM (archive).It was found that indirect decoding of salinity based on spectral char-acteristics of vegetation images is strongly dependent on crop growth phase (period of shoot-ing).LANDSAT archive images with normalized soil salinity index (NDSI) allow to develop salinity maps and soil salinity dynamics maps at semi-quantitative level.Based on computer analysis of LANDSAT images it was determined that soil salinity at study object during the pe-riod from 1987 to 2014 has increased due to significant decrease of the area of non-saline soil by 41.5% and increasing of the areas of low and moderately saline soils by 34.9%, also regions with heavily saline soils at 6.6% of total surveyed area have been detected, which previously were absent.