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Estimating soil organic carbon from soil reflectance: a review

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Abstract

Soil organic carbon (SOC) concentration is a useful soil property with which to guide agricultural applications of chemical inputs. To enable this, simple, accurate, rapid and inexpensive methods are needed to produce maps of surface SOC concentrations. Researchers have investigated estimates of soil surface properties from remotely sensed information as a means of rapidly quantifying and monitoring some surface soil properties, such as SOC. The objective of this paper is to review the potential and limitations of remotely sensed data for mapping and evaluating SOC. Several statistical methods including simple regression models, the ‘soil line’ approach, principal component analysis and geostatistics have been applied to data to investigate the accuracy of such estimates. A review of the literature shows that predictive equations are not universal and require new regression models for every scene. An important benefit of remotely sensed data is to suggest a sampling strategy that can lead to improved representation of spatial heterogeneity in SOC.

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Acknowledgments

We very much appreciate the help, comments and suggestions of the many colleagues and students. Special thanks go to Professor M. A. Oliver who carefully edited the paper and provided very helpful suggestions. Two anonymous reviewers provided valuable suggestions to improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

    Moslem Ladoni & Hosein Ali Bahrami

  2. College of Geography, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Sayed Kazem Alavipanah

  3. Soil and Water Research Center, Tehran, Iran

    Ali Akbar Norouzi

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  1. Moslem Ladoni
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  2. Hosein Ali Bahrami
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  3. Sayed Kazem Alavipanah
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  4. Ali Akbar Norouzi
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Ladoni, M., Bahrami, H.A., Alavipanah, S.K. et al. Estimating soil organic carbon from soil reflectance: a review. Precision Agric 11, 82–99 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11119-009-9123-3

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