Assessing the Accuracy of Soil and Water Quality Characterization Using Remote Sensing

Vincent Paul Obade (), Rattan Lal () and Richard Moore ()

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2014, vol. 28, issue 14, 5109 pages

Abstract: Assessing the risks of agricultural management practices on agro-ecosystem sustainability has special relevance in Ohio, USA due to the states prominence in agricultural production. However, identifying detrimental management practices remains controversial, a situation that may explain the inability to halt the recurring harmful algal blooms in inland waters, or the build-up of nutrients in the agricultural soils. Thus, detailed and accurate information is required to identify soils and water susceptible to degradation, and to support counteractive remedial measures. In this study soil and water spectral reflectance data were acquired with an Analytical Spectral Device, and modeled with laboratory measured physical and chemical properties using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and decision trees. Results reveal no site differences in pH for the water, but the differences in electrical conductivity (EC) were significant. Similarly, the pH for soils did not vary significantly with depth increments. However, the no till (NT) managed soils had significantly higher pH. EC varied with depth of the water, whereas the soil carbon: nitrogen (C/N) ratio varied with management in 4 out of 5 sites. Finally, this study shows that remotely sensed data can be utilized to effectively characterize agricultural management practices based on inherent soil and water properties, thus providing information critical for assessing the efficacy of Water Quality Trading initiatives. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Accuracy; Management; Remote sensing; Soil and water quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-014-0796-7 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:28:y:2014:i:14:p:5091-5109

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-014-0796-7

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().