Monitoring organic carbon, total nitrogen and pH for field reclaimed soils using reflectance spectroscopy

Assessing the success of soil reclamation programs can be costly and time consuming due to the cost of traditional soil analytical techniques. One cost-effective tool that has been successfully used to efficiently analyze a range of soil parameters is reflectance spectroscopy. We used reflectance data to analyze natural and reclaimed soils in the field, examining three key soil parameters: soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), and soil pH. Continuous wavelet transforms combined with machine learning models were used to predict these parameters. Based on the root mean square error (RMSE), R2 value and the Ratio of Performance to Deviation (RPD), the Cubist model produced the most accurate models for SOC, TN, and pH. The RMSE, R2, and RPD values for SOC were 0.60%, 0.80, and 2.2, respectively. The TN model results were 0.05%, 0.81 and 2.5, and pH model results were 0.44, 0.69 and 1.8. Overall, the optimal model can be used to predict SOC and TN accurately, and improvements in the pH model are needed as pH values less than 6.5 were consistently overpredicted.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author