Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
It should be noted that the variation of the carbon content within the field was
rather high (Fig.
5.27
), which facilitates the sensing. On-the-go sensing with the
same implement in fields with a smaller carbon variation resulted in much lower
coefficients of determination and hence less useful results (Bricklemyer and Brown
2010
). So far, the best results with on-the-go carbon sensing have been obtained in
humid, moderate areas and with weathered soils. In arid and semiarid regions, the
organic carbon content of soils is much lower and the fraction of
inorganic carbon
on the total carbon content generally is higher. This makes it much more difficult to
get reliable maps about the site-specific situation of organic carbon.
5.4
Summary
Among the many concepts that basically can be used to sense soil properties, a few
are about mature for on-the-go applications in site-specific farming such as:
•
Sensing topography and mapping of digital elevation by means of RTK-GPS
•
Sensing electric conductivities in humid areas for maps that inform about the
site-specific yield potential
•
Sensing salinity in arid areas by means of electric conductivities
•
Sensing water via optical reflectance from horizontal and vertical soil surfaces
for the control of sowing depths and irrigation
•
Sensing organic matter in humid, moderate areas by means of optical reflectance.
Additional techniques for sensing soil properties are developing. These are
e.g.
techniques for sensing soil water in a separate mode via radar waves or via electric
capacitance and especially techniques for sensing multiple soil properties simulta-
neously by means of infrared reflectance.
References
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Allred BJ, Daniels JJ, Ehsani MR (2008) Handbook of agricultural geophysics. CRC Press, Boca
Raton
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