Modeling Soil Spectral Reflectance with Different Mass Moisture Content

: The spatio-temporal distribution and variation of soil moisture content have a significant impact on soil temperature, heat balance between land and atmosphere and atmospheric circulation. Hence, it is of great significance to monitor the soil moisture content dynamically at a large scale and to acquire its continuous change during a certain period of time. The object of this paper is to explore the relationship between the mass moisture content of soil and soil spectrum. This was accomplished by building a spectral simulation model of soil with different mass moisture content using hyperspectral remote sensing data. The spectra of soil samples of 8 sampling sites in Beijing were obtained using ASD Field Spectrometer. Their mass moisture contents were measured using oven drying method. Spectra of two soil samples under different mass moisture content were used to construct soil spectral simulation model, and the model was validated using spectra of the other six soil samples. The results show that the accuracy of the model is higher when the mass water content of soil is below field capacity. At last, we used the spectra of three sampling points on campus of Peking University to test the model, and the minimum value of root mean square error between simulated and measured spectral reflectance was 0.0058. Therefore the model is expected to perform well in simulating the spectrum reflectance of different types of soil when mass water content below field capacity.