Abstract

Texture is a primary variable affecting the total amount of carbon stock in the soil. The standard methods for determining soil texture, however, are still conducted manually and are largely time-consuming. Reflectance spectroscopy in the visible, near infrared (Vis-NIR, 350-2500 nm) spectral region could be an alternative to standard laboratory methods. The aim of this paper was to develop calibration models based on laboratory Vis-NIR spectroscopy and PLSR analysis to estimate the texture (sand: 2-0.05 mm; silt: 0.05-0.002 mm; clay: <0.002 mm) in a forest area of southern Italy. An additional objective was to produce continuous maps of sand, silt and clay through a geostatistical approach. Soil samples were collected at 235 locations in the study area, and then dried, sieved at 2 mm and analyzed in laboratory for soil texture and Vis-NIR spectroscopic measurements. Spectra showed that soil samples could be spectrally separable on the basis of classes of texture. To establish the relationships between spectral reflectance and soil texture (sand, silt and clay) partial least squared regression (PLSR) analysis was applied to 175 soil samples, while the remaining 60 samples were used to validate the models. The optimum number of factors to be retained in the calibration models was determined by leave-one-out cross-validation. Results of cross validation of calibration models indicated that the models fitted quite well and the values of R² ranged between a minimum value of 0.74% for silt and a maximum value of 0.84 for sand content. Results for validation were satisfactory for sand content (R²=0.81) and clay content (R²=0.80) and less satisfactory for silt content (R²=0.70). Geostatistics coupled with Vis-NIR reflectance spectroscopy allowed us to produce continuous maps of sand, silt and clay, which are of critical importance for understanding and managing forest soils.

  Keywords

---

Forest Soils, Soil Texture, Vis-NIR Spectroscopy, Geostatistics, Southern Italy

Authors’ Info

Paper Info

Citation

Conforti M, Froio R, Matteucci G, Buttafuoco G (2015). Visible and near infrared spectroscopy for predicting texture in forest soil: an application in southern Italy. iForest 8: 339-347. - doi: 10.3832/ifor1221-007

Academic Editor

Davide Ascoli

Paper history

Copyright Information

© SISEF - The Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology 2015

  Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Web Metrics

Citation Metrics

Article Citations

Article citations are based on data periodically collected from the Clarivate Web of Science web site
(last update: Feb 2023)

Total number of cites (since 2015): 33
Average cites per year: 3.67

Articles citing this article

List of the papers citing this article based on CrossRef Cited-by.

References

Related Content

Availability and evaluation of European forest soil monitoring data in the study on the effects of air pollution on forests
Cools N, De Vos B
Vol. 4, pp. 205-211 (online: Nov 2011)

Short-time effect of harvesting methods on soil respiration dynamics in a beech forest in southern Mediterranean Italy
Coletta V, Pellicone G, Bernardini V, De Cinti B, Froio R, Marziliano PA, Matteucci G, Ricca N, Turco R, Veltri A
Vol. 10, pp. 645-651 (online: Jun 2017)

Soil chemical and physical status in semideciduous Atlantic Forest fragments affected by atmospheric deposition in central-eastern São Paulo State, Brazil
Lopes MIMS, Ribeiro Dos Santos A, Zuliani Sandrin Camargo C, Bulbovas P, Giampaoli P, Domingos M
Vol. 8, pp. 798-808 (online: Dec 2015)

Wood-soil interactions in soil bioengineering slope stabilization works
Moscatelli MC, Romagnoli M, Cenfi S, Lagomarsino A, Di Tizio A, Spina S, Grego S
Vol. 2, pp. 187-191 (online: Oct 2009)

Soil stoichiometry modulates effects of shrub encroachment on soil carbon concentration and stock in a subalpine grassland
Ding L, Wang P, Zhang W, Zhang Y, Li S, Wei X, Chen X, Zhang Y, Yang F
Vol. 13, pp. 65-72 (online: Feb 2020)

Seasonal dynamics of soil respiration and nitrification in three subtropical plantations in southern China
Wang W, Cheng R, Shi Z, Ingwersen J, Luo D, Liu S
Vol. 9, pp. 813-821 (online: Oct 2016)

Changes in the properties of grassland soils as a result of afforestation
Podwika M, Solek-Podwika K, Ciarkowska K
Vol. 11, pp. 600-608 (online: Oct 2018)

Soil fauna communities and microbial activities response to litter and soil properties under degraded and restored forests of Hyrcania
Bazyari M, Etemad V, Kooch Y, Shirvany A
Vol. 14, pp. 490-498 (online: Dec 2021)

Relationship between microbiological, physical, and chemical attributes of different soil types under Pinus taeda plantations in southern Brazil
Zanon JA, Marques R, Herzog de Carvalho D, Larsen JG, De Souza Kulmann MS, Schumacher MV
Vol. 17, pp. 29-35 (online: Feb 2024)

Effect of size and surrounding forest vegetation on chemical properties of soil in forest gaps
Özcan M, Gökbulak F
Vol. 8, pp. 67-72 (online: Feb 2015)