There is a need to update soil maps and monitor soil organic carbon (SOC) in the upper horizons or plough layer for enabling decision support and land management, while complying with several policies, especially those favoring soil carbon storage. This review paper is dedicated to the satellite-based spectral approaches for SOC assessment that have been achieved from several satellite sensors, study scales and geographical contexts in the past decade. Most approaches relying on pure spectral models have been carried out since 2019 and have dealt with temperate croplands in Europe, China and North America at the scale of small regions, of some hundreds of km²: dry combustion and wet oxidation were the analytical determination methods used for 50% and 35% of the satellite-derived SOC studies, for which measured topsoil SOC contents mainly referred to mineral soils, typically cambisols and luvisols and to a lesser extent, regosols, leptosols, stagnosols and chernozems, with annual cropping systems with a SOC value of ~15 g·kg⁻¹ and a range of 30 g·kg⁻¹ in median. Most satellite-derived SOC spectral prediction models used limited preprocessing and were based on bare soil pixel retrieval after Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) thresholding. About one third of these models used partial least squares regression (PLSR), while another third used random forest (RF), and the remaining included machine learning methods such as support vector machine (SVM). We did not find any studies either on deep learning methods or on all-performance evaluations and uncertainty analysis of spatial model predictions. Nevertheless, the literature examined here identifies satellite-based spectral information, especially derived under bare soil conditions, as an interesting approach that deserves further investigations. Future research includes considering the simultaneous analysis of imagery acquired at several dates i.e., temporal mosaicking, testing the influence of possible disturbing factors and mitigating their effects fusing mixed models incorporating non-spectral ancillary information.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a variable of vital environmental significance in terms of soil quality and function, global food security, and climate change mitigation. Estimation of its content and prediction accuracy on a broader scale remain crucial. Although, spectroscopy under proximal sensing remains one of the best approaches to accurately predict SOC, however, spectroscopy limitation to estimate SOC on a larger spatial scale remains a concern. Therefore, for an efficient quantification of SOC content, faster and less costly techniques are needed, recent studies have suggested the use of remote sensing approaches. The primary aim of this research was to evaluate and compare the capabilities of small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) for monitoring and estimation of SOC with those obtained from spaceborne (Sentinel-2) and proximal soil sensing (field spectroscopy measurements) on an agricultural field low in SOC content. Nine calculated spectral indices were added to the remote sensing approaches (UAS and Sentinel-2) to enhance their predictive accuracy. Modeling was carried out using various bands/wavelength (UAS (6), Sentinel-2 (9)) and the calculated spectral indices were used as independent variables to generate soil prediction models using five-fold cross-validation built using random forest (RF) and support vector machine regression (SVMR). The correlation regarding SOC and the selected indices and bands/wavelengths was determined prior to the prediction. Our results revealed that the selected spectral indices slightly influenced the output of UAS compared to Sentinel-2 dataset as the latter had only one index correlated with SOC. For prediction, the models built on UAS data had a better accuracy with RF than the two other data used. However, using SVMR, the field spectral prediction models achieved a better overall result for the entire study (log(1/R), RPD = 1.40; R²_CV = 0.48; RPIQ = 1.65; RMSEPCV = 0.24), followed by UAS and then Sentinel-2, respectively. This study has shown that UAS imagery can be exploited efficiently using spectral indices.

Although many Soil Spectral Libraries (SSLs) have been created globally, these libraries still have not been operationalized for end-users. To address this limitation, this study created an online Brazilian Soil Spectral Service (BraSpecS). The system was based on the Brazilian Soil Spectral Library (BSSL) with samples collected in the Visible–Near–Short-wave infrared (vis–NIR–SWIR) and Mid-infrared (MIR) ranges. The interactive platform allows users to find spectra, act as custodians of the data, and estimate several soil properties and classification. The system was tested by 500 Brazilian and 65 international users. Users accessed the platform (besbbr.com.br), uploaded their spectra, and received soil organic carbon (SOC) and clay content prediction results via email. The BraSpecS prediction provided good results for Brazilian data, but performed variably for other countries. Prediction for countries outside of Brazil using local spectra (External Country Soil Spectral Libraries, ExCSSL) mostly showed greater performance than BraSpecS. Clay R² ranged from 0.5 (BraSpecS) to 0.8 (ExCSSL) in vis–NIR–SWIR, but BraSpecS MIR models were more accurate in most situations. The development of external models based on the fusion of local samples with BSSL formed the Global Soil Spectral Library (GSSL). The GSSL models improved soil properties prediction for different countries. Nevertheless, the proposed system needs to be continually updated with new spectra so they can be applied broadly. Accordingly, the online system is dynamic, users can contribute their data and the models will adapt to local information. Our community-driven web platform allows users to predict soil attributes without learning soil spectral modeling, which will invite end-users to utilize this powerful technique.

Spectroscopy has demonstrated the ability to predict specific soil properties. Consequently, it is a promising avenue to complement the traditional methods that are costly and time-consuming. In the visible-near infrared (Vis-NIR) region, spectroscopy has been widely used for the rapid determination of organic components, especially soil organic carbon (SOC) using laboratory dry (lab-dry) measurement. However, steps such as collecting, grinding, sieving and soil drying at ambient (room) temperature and humidity for several days, which is a vital process, make the lab-dry preparation a bit slow compared to the field or laboratory wet (lab-wet) measurement. The use of soil spectra measured directly in the field or on a wet sample remains challenging due to uncontrolled soil moisture variations and other environmental conditions. However, for direct and timely prediction and mapping of soil properties, especially SOC, the field or lab-wet measurement could be an option in place of the lab-dry measurement. This study focuses on comparison of field and naturally acquired laboratory measurement of wet samples in Visible (VIS), Near-Infrared (NIR) and Vis-NIR range using several pretreatment approaches including orthogonal signal correction (OSC). The comparison was concluded with the development of validation models for SOC prediction based on partial least squares regression (PLSR) and support vector machine (SVMR). Nonetheless, for the OSC implementation, we use principal component regression (PCR) together with PLSR as SVMR is not appropriate under OSC. For SOC prediction, the field measurement was better in the VIS range with R²_CV = 0.47 and RMSEPcv = 0.24, while in Vis-NIR range the lab-wet measurement was better with R²_CV = 0.44 and RMSEPcv = 0.25, both using the SVMR algorithm. However, the prediction accuracy improves with the introduction of OSC on both samples. The highest prediction was obtained with the lab-wet dataset (using PLSR) in the NIR and Vis-NIR range with R²_CV = 0.54/0.55 and RMSEPcv = 0.24. This result indicates that the field and, in particular, lab-wet measurements, which are not commonly used, can also be useful for SOC prediction, just as the lab-dry method, with some adjustments.