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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-XI-4-2026-145-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Machine learning applications for modeling and mapping soil erosion in tropical regions</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>do Amaral</surname>
<given-names>Francisco Hélter Fernandes</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Velastegui-Montoya</surname>
<given-names>Andrés</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>de Paula</surname>
<given-names>Eder M.S.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Postgraduate Program in Geography, Federal University of Pará, Belém, Brazil</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Faculty of Engineering in Earth Sciences, ESPOL Polytechnic University, Guayaquil, Ecuador</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Laboratory of Geoinformation and Remote Sensing, Faculty of Engineering in Earth Sciences, ESPOL Polytechnic University, Guayaquil, Ecuador</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Faculty of Geography, Federal University of Pará, Belém, Brazil</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>10</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XI-4-2026</volume>
<fpage>145</fpage>
<lpage>152</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Francisco Hélter Fernandes do Amaral et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-4-2026/145/2026/isprs-annals-XI-4-2026-145-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-4-2026/145/2026/isprs-annals-XI-4-2026-145-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-4-2026/145/2026/isprs-annals-XI-4-2026-145-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-4-2026/145/2026/isprs-annals-XI-4-2026-145-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Soil erosion represents a major environmental issue that threatens ecosystem integrity and land sustainability, making the development of reliable susceptibility models crucial for supporting mitigation and management policies. This study evaluates the potential of three machine learning algorithms Weighted Subspace Random Forest (WSRF), Regularized Random Forest (RRF), and Naive Bayes (NB) for soil erosion susceptibility mapping in the Pardo River watershed, situated between the states of S&amp;atilde;o Paulo and Minas Gerais, Brazil. A total of 120 sampling locations, including erosion and non-erosion occurrences, were identified through field surveys and high-resolution imagery obtained from Google Earth Pro. Initially, fifteen conditioning factors related to erosion processes were considered; however, after applying multicollinearity and relevance analyses, thirteen variables were retained for the final modeling framework. To evaluate model robustness, the dataset was randomly partitioned into training (70%) and testing (30%) subsets. Model performance was assessed using statistical indicators, including accuracy and AUC-ROC metrics. The NB, RRF, and WSRF models achieved accuracy values of 0.87, 0.89, and 0.88, respectively, while the corresponding AUC-ROC values reached 0.93, 0.96, and 0.95. Among the evaluated approaches, RRF yielded the highest predictive performance, demonstrating the effectiveness of machine learning techniques for supporting sustainable land management and erosion-prone area conservation. In addition, the proposed methodological framework offers a transferable approach for future susceptibility studies and contributes to expanding geospatial modeling applications across different environmental settings.</p>
</abstract>
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