Exploring the Potential of vis-NIR Spectroscopy as a Covariate in Soil Organic Matter Mapping

Robust soil organic matter (SOM) mapping is required by farms, but their generation requires a large number of samples to be chemically analyzed, which is cost prohibitive. Recently, research has shown that visible and near-infrared (vis-NIR) reflectance spectroscopy is a fast and accurate technique for estimating SOM in a cost-effective manner. However, few studies have focused on using vis-NIR spectroscopy as a covariate to improve the accuracy of spatial modeling. In this study, our objective was to compare the mapping accuracy from a spatial model using kriging methods with and without the covariate of vis-NIR spectroscopy. We split the 261 samples into a calibration set (104) for building the spectral predictive model, a test set for generating the vis-NIR augmented set from the prediction of the fitted spectral predictive model (131), and a validation set (26) for evaluating map accuracy. We used two datasets (235 samples) for Kriging: a laboratory-based dataset (Ld, observations from calibration and test datasets) and a laboratory-based dataset with vis-NIR augmented predictions (Au.p, observations from calibration and predictions from test dataset), a laboratory-based dataset with vis-NIR spectra as the covariance (Ld.co) and augmented dataset with predictions using vis-NIR with vis-NIR spectra for the covariance (Au.p.co). The first one to seven accumulated principal components of vis-NIR spectra were used as the covariates when we used the measurement of Ld.co and Au.p.co. The map accuracy was evaluated by the validation set for the four datasets using Kriging. The results indicated that adding vis-NIR spectra as covariates had great potential in improving the map accuracy using kriging, and much higher accuracies were observed for Ld.p.co (RMSE of 5.51 g kg(-1)) and Au.p.co (RMSE of 5.66 g kg(-1)) than without using vis-NIR spectra as covariates for Ld (RMSE of 7.12 g kg(-1)) and Au.p (RMSE of 7.69 g kg(-1)). With a similar model performance to Ld.p.co, Au.p.co can reduce the cost of laboratory analysis for 60% of soil samples, demonstrating its advantage in cost-efficiency for spatial modeling of soil information. Therefore, we conclude that vis-NIR spectra can be used as a cost-effective technique to obtain augmented data to improve fine-resolution spatial mapping of soil information.

Automated summary

Robust soil organic matter (SOM) mapping is necessary for farms; however, it is cost prohibitive to chemically analyze a large number of samples. Recent research has shown that visible and near-infrared (vis-NIR) reflectance spectroscopy can accurately estimate SOM in a cost-effective manner. This study aimed to compare the mapping accuracy with and without the use of vis-NIR spectroscopy as a covariate. Results indicated that adding vis-NIR spectra as covariates significantly improved the map accuracy, providing a cost-efficient technique for fine-resolution spatial mapping of soil information.