Browsing by Author "Sädekoski, Niklas"

Soil is the largest actively cycling terrestrial carbon pool, which has been severely distrubed in the last 100-200 years by human actions. To improve the situation, extensive monitoring of soil carbon and new methods for monitoring are required. This study demonstrates the capability of a portable hyperspectral device operating in the visible-near infrared (VIS-NIR) spectrum for soil organic carbon (SOC) prediction. Two multivariate methods, partial least squares regression (PLSR) and for this purpose previously untested lasso regression were used for prediction. 191 soil samples were collected from Taita Hills, Kenya. The samples represent a tropical altitudinal gradient with five land uses: agroforestry, field, forest, shrubland and sisal plantation. The samples were imaged with hyperspectral camera, Specim IQ in laboratory and in field conditions, and the carbon content of the samples was determined with a dry-oxidization analyzer. Three datasets were derived from the images, one containing the mean spectra of the complete imaged samples, one with segmented sub-image spectra and one with segmented sub-image spectra where outlier spectra were removed. Both multivariate methods were tested with all three datasets with good prediction accuracies (PLSR: R2min = 0.85, RMSEmin = 0.78, lasso: R2min=0.85, RMSEmin=0.80), demonstrating the feasibility of both the device and lasso regression as SOC prediction tools. Using the segmented sub-image datasets improved the results with PLSR but had no significant effect on lasso regression prediction results. While good results were gained with laboratory imagery, the field imaging conditions were difficult, and the data performed poorly. Future research should focus on finding solutions to reliably estimate SOC content in situ or with portable laboratory setups to make SOC measurements more widely accessible and agile for e.g. precision agriculture purposes.