Prediction of the presence of topsoil nitrogen from spaceborne hyperspectral data

Conventional methods of soil nitrogen extraction are time consuming, expensive and tedious. Remote sensing and Geographical Information System technologies can be used for the rapid and efficient prediction of the presence of soil nitrogen. However, studies are limited by and large to fields of larger and homogeneous units. This research concentrates on the prediction of topsoil nitrogen from harvested, scattered and small-sized agricultural fields of India using hyperspectral data. Spaceborne hyperspectral Hyperion data are used for the prediction of the presence of nitrogen. Multivariate partial least square regression method was used to predict the presence of nitrogen from reflectance. Reflectance data were pretreated using moving average and Savitzky–Golay filters which resulted in moderate prediction of R² 0.65 and 0.63 for calibration and validation, respectively. It can be inferred that Hyperion data can be effectively used for the prediction of the presence of soil nitrogen with a moderate level of accuracy even in case of scattered fields and fields of sizes approximately equal to the spatial resolution of the satellite.