Abstract
Recent advances in remote sensing techniques provide the potential for monitoring soil color as well as soil moisture conditions at the spatial and temporal scales required for detailed local modeling efforts. Soil moisture as well as soil color is a key feature used in the identification and classification of soils. Soil spectral reflectance has a direct relationship with soil color, as well as to other parameters such as soil moisture, soil texture. and organic matter. We evaluate the influence of seven soil properties, soil color and soil moisture, on soil spectral reflectance. This paper presents the results obtained from the ground-truth spectral reflectance measurements in the 300-1100 nm wavelength range for various land surfaces. The results suggest that the reflectance properties of soils are related to soil color, soil texture, and soil moisture. Increasing soil moisture content generally decreases soil reflectance which leads to parallel curves of soil reflectance spectra across the entire shortwave spectrum. We discuss the relationships between the soil reflectance and the Munsell Soil Color Charts which contain standard color chips with colors specified by designations for hue, value, and chroma.
