Sponsoring Society and Committee: IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society/ Standards Committee (GRSS/SC)

Title: Standard Protocol and Scheme for Measuring Soil Spectroscopy

Scope: This Standard defines protocols and schemes for sensors and measurement methods when merging, comparing and utilizing Soil Spectral Libraries (SSLs) from many sources, including LUCAS SSL, GEO-CRADLE SSL, BRAZILAN SSL and GLOBAL SSL, as well as monitoring their measurement scheme before performing data manipulation or quantitative analyses. Using the standard SSLs is an important stage while utilizing Hyperspectral (HSI) data for monitoring and mapping soils.

Background: For over 25 years, groups worldwide have been measuring soil reflectance spectra across the VIS–NIR–SWIR (0.4–2.5 μm) region in the laboratory, mainly for chemometric purposes. As a result, many soil spectral libraries (SSLs) have been generated with local to continental coverage, each making use of different sensors and protocols. As reflectance spectroscopy of soils is very sensitive to measurement geometry, illumination status, sensor output, sample preparation and more, merging or comparing SSLs remains a problematic issue. In addition, since hyperspectral (HSR) technology is entering a new and promising era (from both air and space domains), utilization of SSLs is becoming more and more attractive to users for direct implementation of SSL models on HSR data. Measuring soil reflectance by agreed standards and protocols should thus also be aligned with the HSR technology. Accordingly, the P4005 working group will work toward establishing a standard and protocol to measure reflectance spectroscopy of soil material.