Characterization of soil properties using remote sensing techniques

Many conventional laboratory methods are used to characterize spatial and temporal variation of soil properties in order to understand soil quality for different purposes. Currently there is a high demand for accurate soil information by land users. Therefore there is a need to develop a rapid, inexpensive, non-destructive and accurate technique that could compensate or replace conventional laboratory methodologies. Remote sensing has the potential to serve as an alternative approach to characterize soil properties due to its advantages over conventional laboratory methods such as it is rapid, non-destructive and it has low cost. The objectives of this study were to: (i) evaluate the ability of proximal soil sensing to characterize soil properties namely organic matter, soil moisture content, macronutrients, soil texture, cation exchange capacity (CEC), and pH. (ii) Identify bands of relevance from proximal soil sensing (300-2400 nm) that can provide acceptable reflectance variation for different levels of selected soil properties. (iii) Evaluate the performance of models developed from multispectral space-borne image in characterizing selected soil properties.