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Remote sensing of soil properties in precision agriculture: A review

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Abstract

The success of precision agriculture (PA) depends strongly upon an efficient and accurate method for in-field soil property determination. This information is critical for farmers to calculate the proper amount of inputs for best crop performance and least environmental effect. Grid sampling, as a traditional way to explore in-field soil variation, is no longer considered appropriate since it is labor intensive, time consuming and lacks spatial exhaustiveness. Remote sensing (RS) provides a new tool for PA information gathering and has advantages of low cost, rapidity, and relatively high spatial resolution. Great progress has been made in utilizing RS for in-field soil property determination. In this article, recent publications on the subject of RS of soil properties in PA are reviewed. It was found that a large array of agriculturally-important soil properties (including textures, organic and inorganic carbon content, macro- and micro-nutrients, moisture content, cation exchange capacity, electrical conductivity, pH, and iron) were quantified with RS successfully to the various extents. The applications varied from laboratory-analysis of soil samples with a bench-top spectrometer to field-scale soil mapping with satellite hyper-spectral imagery. The visible and near-infrared regions are most commonly used to infer soil properties, with the ultraviolet, mid-infrared, and thermal-infrared regions have been used occasionally. In terms of data analysis, MLR, PCR, and PLSR are three techniques most widely used. Limitations and possibilities of using RS for agricultural soil property characterization were also identified in this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological and Agriculture Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843-2117, USA

    Yufeng Ge & J. Alex Thomasson

  2. USDA-ARS, Crop Production Systems Research Unit, Stoneville, MS, 38776, USA

    Ruixiu Sui

Authors
  1. Yufeng Ge
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  2. J. Alex Thomasson
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  3. Ruixiu Sui
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Correspondence to Ruixiu Sui.

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Dr. Yufeng Ge obtained his Bachelor and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University (China) and Ph. D. in Agricultural Engineering from Texas A&M University. He is current an assistant research professor in the Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering, Texas A&M University. His area of expertise includes optoelectronic sensor design for agricultural and biological applications, precision agriculture, cotton engineering, and bioenergy.

Dr. J. Alex Thomasson is a Professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Texas A&M University. His areas of research include four broad and occasionally overlapping emphases: (1) precision agriculture, remote sensing, sensor development, and image analysis; (2) engineering aspects of cotton production and processing; (3) bioenergy; and (4) traceability and identity preservation. His career has spanned more than 20 years and included work as a research engineer with USDA and as a faculty member at Mississippi State University. His degrees, all in agricultural engineering, are from Texas Tech University (B.S.), Louisiana State University (M.S.), and University of Kentucky (Ph. D.). He has authored nearly 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and numerous other papers. He is also the holder of one patent and multiple invention disclosures in various stages of the patenting process.

Dr. Ruixiu Sui is a research agricultural engineer at USDA. Before joining USDA, he worked with Texas A&M University and Mississippi State University as a faculty member. Dr. Sui earned his B.S. degree in Radio-Physics from Lanzhou University in China, and received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Tennessee. He has more than 30 years of research experience in sensors and controls, precision agriculture, and cotton engineering. He holds three patents and has published more than 100 refereed journal articles and conference papers. As a Lead Scientist of the Irrigation Research Team, Dr. Sui’s current research focuses on novel technologies for water and nutrient management in agriculture, including development of soil-water, plant-water, plant-nutrient stress sensors, wireless sensor networks, automation and control systems, and sensor-based feedback algorithms for monitoring and control of irrigation and nutrient applications of crops. Dr. Sui is also interested in the studies on crop water productivity and water-yield-quality relationships for agronomic and bio-energy crops.

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Ge, Y., Thomasson, J.A. & Sui, R. Remote sensing of soil properties in precision agriculture: A review. Front. Earth Sci. 5, 229–238 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-011-0175-0

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