Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Soil Analysis Using Visible and Near Infrared Spectroscopy

  • Protocol
  • First Online:
Plant Mineral Nutrients

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 953))

Abstract

Visible-near infrared diffuse reflectance (vis-NIR) spectroscopy is a fast, nondestructive technique well suited for analyses of some of the essential constituents of the soil. These constituents, mainly clay minerals, organic matter and soil water strongly affect conditions for plant growth and influence plant nutrition. Here we describe the process by which vis-NIR spectroscopy can be used to collect soil spectra in the laboratory. Because it is an indirect technique, the succeeding model calibrations and validations that are necessary to obtain reliable predictions about the soil properties of interest are also described in the chapter.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Protocol
USD 49.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Stenberg B, Rossel RAV, Mouazen AM, Wetterlind J (2010) Visible and near infrared spectroscopy in soil science. In: Sparks DL (ed) Advances in agronomy, vol 107. pp 163–215

    Google Scholar 

  2. Viscarra Rossel RA, Walvoort DJJ, McBratney AB, Janik LJ, Skjemstad JO (2006) Visible, near infrared, mid infrared or combined diffuse reflectance spectroscopy for simultaneous assessment of various soil properties. Geoderma 131:59–75

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Miller CE (2001) Chemical principles of near-infrared technology. In: Williams P, Norris K (eds) Near-infrared technology in the agricultural and food industries, 2nd edn. American Association of Cerial Chemists Inc, Minesota, pp 19–37

    Google Scholar 

  4. Martens H, Naes T (1989) Multivariate calibration. Wiley, Chichester, UK

    Google Scholar 

  5. Liu WD, Baret F, Gu XF, Tong QX, Zheng LF, Zhang B (2002) Relating soil surface moisture to reflectance. Remote Sens Environ 81:238–246

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Twomey SA, Bohren CF, Mergenthaler JL (1986) Reflectance and albedo differences between wet and dry surfaces. Appl Opt 25:431–437

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Schulze DG (2002) An introduction to soil mineralogy. In: Dixon JB, Schulze DG (eds) Soil mineralogy with environmental applications. Soil Science Society of America Inc., Madison, WI, pp 1–35

    Google Scholar 

  8. Sherman DM, Waite TD (1985) Electronic spectra of Fe3+ oxides and oxiyhydroxides in the near infrared to ultraviolet. Am Mineral 70:1262–1269

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Clark RN, King TVV, Klejwa M, Swayze GA, Vergo N (1990) High spectral resolution reflectance spectroscopy of minerals. J Geophys Res Solid Earth Planets 95:12653–12680

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Bishop JL (1994) Infrared spectroscopic analyses on the nature of water in montmorillonite. Clays Clay Miner 42:702–716

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Ben-Dor E, Irons JR, Epema GF (1999) Soil refelctance. In: Rencz AN (ed) Remote sensing for the earth sciences: manual of remote sensing, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York, pp 111–188

    Google Scholar 

  12. Viscarra Rossel RA, Behrens T (2010) Using data mining to model and interpret soil diffuse reflectance spectra. Geoderma 158:46–54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Stenberg B (2010) Effects of soil sample pretreatments and standardised rewetting as interacted with sand classes on Vis-NIR predictions of clay and soil organic carbon. Geoderma 158:15–22

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. van Groenigen JW, Mutters CS, Horwath WR, van Kessel C (2003) NIR and DRIFT-MIR spectrometry of soils for predicting soil and crop parameters in a flooded field. Plant Soil 250:155–165

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Malley DF, Yesmin L, Wray D, Edwards S (1999) Application of near-infrared spectroscopy in analysis of soil mineral nutrients. Comm Soil Sci Plant Anal 30:999–1012

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Dunn BW, Beecher HG, Batten GD, Ciavarella S (2002) The potential of near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy for soil analysis – a case study from the Riverine Plain of south-eastern Australia. Aust J Exp Agric 42:607–614

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Mouazen AM, De Baerdemaeker J, Ramon H (2006) Effect of wavelength range on the measurement accuracy of some selected soil constituents using visual-near infrared spectroscopy. J Near Infrared Spectrosc 14:189–199

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Christy CD (2008) Real-time measurement of soil attributes using on-the-go near infrared reflectance spectroscopy. Comput Electron Agr 61:10–19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Mouazen AM, De Baerdemaeker J, Ramon H (2005) Towards development of on-line soil moisture content sensor using a fibre-type NIR spectrophotometer. Soil Till Res 80:171–183

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Sudduth KA, Hummel JW (1993) Soil organic matter, CEC, and moisture sensing with a portable NIR spectrophotometer. Trans ASAE 36:1571–1582

    Google Scholar 

  21. Viscarra Rossel RA, Cattle SR, Ortega A, Fouad Y (2009) In situ measurements of soil colour, mineral composition and clay content by vis-NIR spectroscopy. Geoderma 150:253–266

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Williams PC, Norris K (2001) Variables affecting near-infrared spectroscopic analysis. In: Williams P, Norris K (eds) Near-infrared technology in the agricultural and food industries, 2nd edn. American Association of Cerial Chemists Inc., Minesota, pp 171–185

    Google Scholar 

  23. Viscarra Rossel RA (2008) ParLeS: software for chemometric analysis of spectroscopic data. Chemometr Intell Lab Syst 90:72–83

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Shepherd KD, Walsh MG (2002) Development of reflectance spectral libraries for characterization of soil properties. Soil Sci Soc Am J 66:988–998

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Wetterlind J, Stenberg B, Söderström M (2007) Farm-soil mapping using NIR-technique for increased sample point density. In: Stafford JV (ed) 6th European conference on precision agriculture. Wageningen Academic publishers, Skiathos, Greece, pp 265–270

    Google Scholar 

  26. Wetterlind J, Stenberg B, Soderstrom M (2010) Increased sample point density in farm soil mapping by local calibration of visible and near infrared prediction models. Geoderma 156:152–160

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Viscarra Rossel RA, Jeon YS, Odeh IOA, McBratney AB (2008) Using a legacy soil sample to develop a mid-IR spectral library. Aust J Soil Res 46:1–16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. de Gruijter J, Brus D, Bierkens M, Knotters M (2006) Sampling for natural resource monitoring.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Kennard RW, Stone LA (1969) Computer aided design of experiments. Technometrics 11:137–148

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Brown DJ, Bricklemyer RS, Miller PR (2005) Validation requirements for diffuse reflectance soil characterization models with a case study of VNIR soil C prediction in Montana. Geoderma 129:251–267

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. R Development Core Team (2010) R: a language and environment for statistical computing, 2.11.1 edn. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria

    Google Scholar 

  32. Pimstein A, Notesco G, Ben-Dor E (2011) Performance of three identical spectrometers in retrieving soil reflectance under laboratory conditions. Soil Sci Soc Am J 75:746–759

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  33. Fystro G (2002) The prediction of C and N content and their potential mineralisation in heterogeneous soil samples using Vis-NIR spectroscopy and comparative methods. Plant Soil 246:139–149

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  34. Ben-Dor E, Banin A (1995) Near-infrared analysis as a rapid method to simultaneously evaluate several soil properties. Soil Sci Soc Am J 59:364–372

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  35. Russell CA (2003) Sample preparation and prediction of soil organic matter properties by near infra-red reflectance spectroscopy. Commun Soil Sci Plant Anal 34:1557–1572

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  36. Barthes BG, Brunet D, Ferrer H, Chotte J-L, Feller C (2006) Determination of total carbon and nitrogen content in a range of tropical soils using near infrared spectroscopy: influence of replication and sample grinding and drying. J Near Infrared Spectros 14:341–348

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  37. Dahm DJ, Dahm KD (2007) Interpreting diffuse reflectance and transmittance: a theoretical introduction to absorption spectroscopy of scattering materials. NIR Publications, Chichester, UK

    Google Scholar 

  38. Savitzky A, Golay M (1964) Smoothing and differentiation of data by simplified least squares procedures. Anal Chem 36:1627–1639

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  39. Geladi P, Macdougall D, Martens H (1985) Linearization and scatter-correction for near-infrared reflectance spectra of meat. Appl Spectrosc 39:491–500

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Barnes RJ, Dhanoa MS, Lister SJ (1989) Standard normal variate transformation and de-trending of near-infrared diffuse reflectance spectra. Appl Spectrosc 43:772–777

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  41. Viscarra Rossel RA, Lark RM (2009) Improved analysis and modelling of soil diffuse reflectance spectra using wavelets. Eur J Soil Sci 60:453–464

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil and Environment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Skara, Sweden

    Johanna Wetterlind, Bo Stenberg & Raphael A. Viscarra Rossel

Authors
  1. Johanna Wetterlind
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Bo Stenberg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Raphael A. Viscarra Rossel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johanna Wetterlind .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of York, Biology Department Area 9, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom

    Frans J.M. Maathuis

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

About this protocol

Cite this protocol

Wetterlind, J., Stenberg, B., Rossel, R.A.V. (2013). Soil Analysis Using Visible and Near Infrared Spectroscopy. In: Maathuis, F. (eds) Plant Mineral Nutrients. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 953. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-152-3_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-152-3_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-62703-151-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-62703-152-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Protocols

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation