The effect of soil moisture on the accuracy of the spectroscopy method in estimating the amount of soil organic matter

Soil organic matter is considered as an indicator of soil quality and its fertility due to its impact on the physical, chemical and biological properties of soil. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of moisture on soil spectral behavior in order to estimate the amount of organic matter using visible-near infrared spectroscopy. Also, the performance of different preprocessing methods was compared in modeling. For this purpose, 50 soil samples from a surface layer (0-30 cm) were randomly collected from some cities in Tehran province. The samples were air-dried and passed through a 2 mm sieve. The amount of organic matter and soil texture were measured in the laboratory. To measure spectral reflectance, soil samples are dry in the oven and they were hydrated with levels of 5, 10, 15 and 20 wt.% (Grams of water / g of soil). Then, Soil samples were scanned using a FieldSpec Pro Spectroradiometer with a measurement range of 350–2500 nm. The results of the cross-evaluation indicated that SNV pre-processing method was better in predicting organic carbon content of soil. The best result for the validation group was obtained in dry oven moisture with R2 and RMSE values of 0.83 and 0.422 respectively. Also, R2 and RMSE were 0.75 and 0.543, respectively, at 5% moisture content, 0.70, 0.553 at 10% moisture, 0.605, 0.558 in moisture content of 15%.