The Brazilian Soil Spectral Service (BraSpecS): A User-Friendly System for Global Soil Spectra Communication

• Published in: Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 14; no. 3; p. 740
• Main Authors: Demattê, José A. M., Paiva, Ariane Francine da Silveira, Poppiel, Raul Roberto, Rosin, Nícolas Augusto, Ruiz, Luis Fernando Chimelo, Mello, Fellipe Alcantara de Oliveira, Minasny, Budiman, Grunwald, Sabine, Ge, Yufeng, Ben Dor, Eyal, Gholizadeh, Asa, Gomez, Cecile, Chabrillat, Sabine, Francos, Nicolas, Ayoubi, Shamsollah, Fiantis, Dian, Biney, James Kobina Mensah, Wang, Changkun, Belal, Abdelaziz, Naimi, Salman, Hafshejani, Najmeh Asgari, Bellinaso, Henrique, Moura-Bueno, Jean Michel, Silvero, Nélida E. Q.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.02.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Carbon; Clay; Datasets; Design and construction; Laboratories; Language; Libraries; Life Sciences; Measurement; On-line systems; Optical properties; Organic carbon; Organic soils; precision agriculture; Predictions; Programming languages; proximal soil sensing; Remote sensing; Servers; Short wave radiation; Software; soil analysis; Soil classification; Soil improvement; Soil properties; soil quality; Soil sciences; soil spectral library; Soil testing; Soils; Spectra; spectroscopy; Testing; Web applications; Brazil; United States > US; Africa; proximal soil sensing; soil health monitoring; precision agriculture; soil spectral library; soil analysis; spectroscopy; soil quality; community practice
• ISSN: 2072-4292; 2072-4292
• DOI: 10.3390/rs14030740

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.