There is a renewed awareness of the finite nature of the world’s soil resources, growing concern about soil security and significant uncertainties about the carrying capacity of the planet. Regular assessments of soil conditions from local through to global scales are requested, and there is a clear demand for accurate, up-to-date and spatially referenced soil information by the modelling scientific community, farmers and land users, and policy- and decision-makers. Soil and imaging spectroscopy, based on visible–near-infrared and shortwave infrared (400–2500 nm) spectral reflectance, has been shown to be a proven method for the quantitative prediction of key soil surface properties. With the upcoming launch of the next generation of hyperspectral satellite sensors in the next years, a high potential to meet the demand for global soil mapping and monitoring is appearing. In this paper, we briefly review the basic concepts of soil spectroscopy with a special attention to the effects of soil roughness on reflectance and then provide a review of state of the art, achievements and perspectives in soil mapping and monitoring based on imaging spectroscopy from air- and spaceborne sensors. Selected application cases are presented for the modelling of soil organic carbon, mineralogical composition, topsoil water content and characterization of soil crust, soil erosion and soil degradation stages based on airborne and simulated spaceborne imaging spectroscopy data. Further, current challenges, gaps and new directions toward enhanced soil properties modelling are presented. Overall, this paper highlights the potential and limitations of multiscale imaging spectroscopy nowadays for soil mapping and monitoring, and capabilities and requirements of upcoming spaceborne sensors as support for a more informed and sustainable use of our world’s soil resources.

The present study explores the diurnal variations in blue-sky albedo (α) of soils under clear sky conditions with respect to surface roughness. Three roughness levels of ploughed and unploughed soil surfaces, developed from the same loessial material, were examined. The relation between α of the surfaces and the solar zenith angle, determined during the experiment, enabled us to predict the diurnal α variation of the surfaces throughout the year at a given latitude, between 75° S and 75° N. The optimal time (T _O) for measuring the soil albedo by an instantaneous observation was considered as the best represented time for the daily averaged value within an error lower than ±2%. It was found that the T _O, falling at different times depending on the soil surface roughness, limits the possibilities of data achievement by remote-sensing satellites along one of their sun-synchronous orbits.

A geometrical model, taking into account the diffuse, as well as the specular component of energy leaving soil surfaces in the visible and near-infrared, is discussed here. The model computes the bidirectional, reflectance of soils illuminated by a single source. A rough soil surface is simulated by equal-sized spheroids regularly spaced on a horizontal surface. The model was tested using soil bidirectional reflectance data obtained in laboratory conditions by Jacquemoud et al in 1992. Two parameters describing soil surface geometry were used for modelling the soil relalive reflectance in laboratory conditions: the relative distance (d/ a) between spheroids (relative to their horizontal radii ( a )and the shape of spheroids (b/ a) ( as proportion of their vertical (b) to horizontal radii (a)) The simulation of reflectance for soil surfaces of pebbles and sand, containing simple dense particles with rounded edges, can be carried out using the d/ a and b/ a ratios which nearly described their aclual geometry. The reflectance of more geometrically complicated soil surfaces, such as clay and peat with irregular secondary porous aggregates, can be simulated by surfaces of effective geometry of vertically elongated spheroids.

The albedo of bare soil depends on its organic matter, iron oxide, carbonate contents, and reflectance geometry, features considered stable over time, and also depends on salinity, moisture and roughness, which change dynamically due to agricultural practices. This paper deals with the quantitative estimation of the amount of shortwave radiation that could be reflected by air-dried bare soils in clear-sky conditions within arable lands in Israel throughout the year, assuming that they were shaped by a plough, a disk harrow, or a smoothing harrow. An area of bare soils was extracted from Landsat 8 images, within the contours of arable lands. The radiation reflected from the bare soils was calculated by equations predicting variations in their half-diurnal albedo as the solar zenith angle function. Accordingly, laboratory reflectance data of Israeli soil samples were used. The results clearly showed annual variation in the amount of short-wave radiation reflected from all bare soils within arable lands. The minimum radiation occurred in the winter, between the 1st and 70th day of the year (DOY), and the maximum was identified in the summer between 200th and 250th DOY. This could reach about 3–5 PJ/day and 16–23 PJ/day, respectively.

Smoothing a rough, deeply plowed soil increases its albedo, which determines a lower amount of shortwave radiation absorbed by its surface layer. That surface emits less longwave radiation, leading to a reduction in its temperature, which in turn can affect the climate, influencing the energy transfer between soil, vegetation, and the atmosphere. This paper presents a multistage procedure for estimating the annual dynamics of shortwave radiation reflected from bare soils as a consequence of smoothing the previously plowed and disk-harrowed fields in Poland. This procedure takes into account the spatial diversity of soil units and their properties within bare soil surfaces (extracted from Landsat 8 images), analyzed using digital maps of land use and soils as well as soil datasets stored in soil databases. One minimum and two peaks were found in the annual distribution of the radiation amount reflected from the soils only when smoothing the data. Expressing this reflected radiation as a fraction of the daily energy reaching the studied areas with clear-skies, it was predicted that those spring and summer peaks can reach about 2.2%–2.3% and 1%, respectively, of the incident shortwave radiation for soils that had been plowed and disk harrowed.

The results of the paper draw attention to the fact that the hyperspectral image of soil surface at micro-relief scale may display variation in the soil spectral shape due to illumination conditions of the surface. The image of an extremely rough cultivated soil surface, very deeply ploughed, was obtained by a hyperspectral camera, in the range of 0.4–1.0 μm with 0.67–0.74 nm spectral resolution. It was found that the soil reflectance spectra of the studied surface, illuminated by the direct sunbeams, are clearly convex with distinct absorption features. Furthermore, the soil normalized reflectance spectra were used to distinguish the subtlety of the analysed shaded soil spectra shape. They show that depressions caused by the absorption features of O₂ and H₂O, contained in the atmosphere above directly illuminated soil fragments, transform into peaks, if the same soil is deeply shaded.