Soil Carbon Mapping of the Contiguous US Using VNIR Spectra Within A Heterogeneous Spatial Model

Paul A. Parker () and Bruno Sansó ()
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Paul A. Parker: University of California, Santa Cruz
Bruno Sansó: University of California, Santa Cruz

Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics, 2025, vol. 30, issue 2, No 13, 517-539

Abstract: Abstract The Rapid Carbon Assessment, conducted by the US Department of Agriculture, was implemented in order to obtain a representative sample of soil organic carbon across the contiguous US. In conjunction with a statistical model, the dataset allows for mapping of soil carbon prediction across the US; however, there are two primary challenges to such an effort. First, there exists a large degree of heterogeneity in the data, whereby both the first and second moments of the data generating process seem to vary both spatially and for different land-use categories. Second, the majority of the sampled locations do not actually have laboratory-measured values for soil organic carbon. Rather, visible and near-infrared (VNIR) spectra were measured at most locations, which act as a proxy to help predict carbon content. Thus, we develop a heterogeneous model to analyze this data that allows both the mean and the variance to vary as a function of space as well as land-use category, while incorporating VNIR spectra as covariates. After a cross-validation study that establishes the effectiveness of the model, we construct a complete map of soil organic carbon for the contiguous US along with uncertainty quantification.

Keywords: Conjugacy; Multivariate log-gamma; Rapid Carbon Assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s13253-025-00679-5

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