[2603.22097] SpecTM: Spectral Targeted Masking for Trustworthy Foundation Models

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence arXiv:2603.22097 (cs) [Submitted on 23 Mar 2026] Title:SpecTM: Spectral Targeted Masking for Trustworthy Foundation Models Authors:Syed Usama Imtiaz, Mitra Nasr Azadani, Nasrin Alamdari View a PDF of the paper titled SpecTM: Spectral Targeted Masking for Trustworthy Foundation Models, by Syed Usama Imtiaz and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Foundation models are now increasingly being developed for Earth observation (EO), yet they often rely on stochastic masking that do not explicitly enforce physics constraints; a critical trustworthiness limitation, in particular for predictive models that guide public health decisions. In this work, we propose SpecTM (Spectral Targeted Masking), a physics-informed masking design that encourages the reconstruction of targeted bands from cross-spectral context during pretraining. To achieve this, we developed an adaptable multi-task (band reconstruction, bio-optical index inference, and 8-day-ahead temporal prediction) self-supervised learning (SSL) framework that encodes spectrally intrinsic representations via joint optimization, and evaluated it on a downstream microcystin concentration regression model using NASA PACE hyperspectral imagery over Lake Erie. SpecTM achieves R^2 = 0.695 (current week) and R^2 = 0.620 (8-day-ahead) predictions surpassing all baseline models by (+34% (0.51 Ridge) and +99% (SVR 0.31)) respectively. Our ablation experiments show targeted maskin...