Abstract
Soil properties estimation with the use of reflectance spectroscopy has met major advances over the last decades. Their non-destructive nature and their high accuracy capacity enabled a breakthrough in the efficiency of performing soil analysis against conventional laboratory techniques. As the need for rapid, low cost, and accurate soil properties’ estimations increases, micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) have been introduced and are becoming applicable for informed decision making in various domains. This work presents the assessment of a MEMS sensor (1750–2150 nm) in estimating clay and soil organic carbon (SOC) contents. The sensor was first tested under various experimental setups (different working distances and light intensities) through its similarity assessment (Spectral Angle Mapper) to the measurements of a spectroradiometer of the full 350–2500 nm range that was used as reference. MEMS performance was evaluated over spectra measured from 102 samples in laboratory conditions. Models’ calibrations were performed using random forest (RF) and partial least squares regression (PLSR). The results provide insights that MEMS could be employed for soil properties estimation, since the RF model demonstrated solid performance over both clay (R2 = 0.85) and SOC (R2 = 0.80). These findings pave the way for supporting daily agriculture applications and land related policies through the exploration of a wider set of soil properties.
Highlights
The world is facing a new era in agriculture where technological advances are largely utilized to manage agricultural systems by assisting in the estimation of temporal and spatial changes in soil and crop production [1]
The elaborated work provides insights that mechanical systems (MEMS) spectral sensors can support the global effort of assuring crop quality through monitoring soil and accurately estimating key properties playing the role of soil quality indices
The spectral signatures acquired with the MEMS sensor presented high similarity with corresponding PSR+ 3500 in the common spectral range, which encourages further research of soil properties that are sensitive to vibrations due to electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths inside the
Summary
The world is facing a new era in agriculture where technological advances are largely utilized to manage agricultural systems by assisting in the estimation of temporal and spatial changes in soil and crop production [1]. The most suitable MEMS sensor configuration for reliable measurements was evaluated by testing different set ups, adjusting the height and the light intensity of the sensor in a subset dataset (six soil samples). These measurements were compared to reference measurements with a spectroradiometer with spectral range from 350–2500 nm. These measurements were of compared to reference measurements with a spectroradiometer with spectral range from 350–. Squares regression (PLSR) and the random forests (RF) models are provided and discussed
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