Evaluation of Airborne HySpex and Spaceborne PRISMA Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Data for Soil Organic Matter and Carbonates Estimation

Remote sensing and soil spectroscopy applications are valuable techniques for soil property estimation. Soil organic matter (SOM) and calcium carbonate are important factors in soil quality, and although organic matter is well studied, calcium carbonates require more investigation. In this study, we validated the performance of laboratory soil spectroscopy for estimating the aforementioned properties with referenced in situ data. We also examined the performance of imaging spectroscopy sensors, such as the airborne HySpex and the spaceborne PRISMA. For this purpose, we applied four commonly used machine learning algorithms and six preprocessing methods for the evaluation of the best fitting algorithm.. The study took place over crop areas of Amyntaio in Northern Greece, where extensive soil sampling was conducted. This is an area with a very variable mineralogical environment (from lignite mine to mountainous area). The SOM results were very good at the laboratory scale and for both remote sensing sensors with R2 = 0.79 for HySpex and R2 = 0.76 for PRISMA. Regarding the calcium carbonate estimations, the remote sensing accuracy was R2 = 0.82 for HySpex and R2 = 0.36 for PRISMA. PRISMA was still in the commissioning phase at the time of the study, and therefore, the acquired image did not cover the whole study area. Accuracies for calcium carbonates may be lower due to the smaller sample size used for the modeling procedure. The results show the potential for using quantitative predictions of SOM and the carbonate content based on soil and imaging spectroscopy at the air and spaceborne scales and for future applications using larger datasets

An interlaboratory comparison of mid-infrared spectra acquisition: Instruments and procedures matter

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy has been extensively employed to deliver timely and cost-effective predictions of a number of soil properties. However, although several soil spectral laboratories have been established worldwide, the distinct characteristics of instruments and operations still hamper further integration and interoperability across mid-infrared (MIR) soil spectral libraries. In this study, we conducted a large-scale ring trial experiment to understand the lab-to-lab variability of multiple MIR instruments. By developing a systematic evaluation of different mathematical treatments with modeling algorithms, including regular preprocessing and spectral standardization, we quantified and evaluated instruments' dissimilarity and how this impacts internal and shared model performance. We found that all instruments delivered good predictions when calibrated internally using the same instruments' characteristics and standard operating procedures by solely relying on regular spectral preprocessing that accounts for light scattering and multiplicative/additive effects, e.g., using standard normal variate (SNV). When performing model transfer from a large public library (the USDA NSSC-KSSL MIR library) to secondary instruments, good performance was also achieved by regular preprocessing (e.g., SNV) if both instruments shared the same manufacturer. However, significant differences between the KSSL MIR library and contrasting ring trial instruments responses were evident and confirmed by a semi-unsupervised spectral clustering. For heavily contrasting setups, spectral standardization was necessary before transferring prediction models. Non-linear model types like Cubist and memory-based learning delivered more precise estimates because they seemed to be less sensitive to spectral variations than global partial least square regression. In summary, the results from this study can assist new laboratories in building spectroscopy capacity utilizing existing MIR spectral libraries and support the recent global efforts to make soil spectroscopy universally accessible with centralized or shared operating procedures