South Dakota State University Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2019 Estimating Soil Organic Carbon in Cultivated Soils Using Soil Test Data, Remote Sensing Imagery from Satellites (Landsat 8 and PlantScope), and Web Soil Survey Data Muhammed Halil Koparan South Dakota State University Follow this and additional works at: https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/etd Part of the Plant Sciences Commons, and the Soil Science Commons Recommended Citation Koparan, Muhammed Halil, "Estimating Soil Organic Carbon in Cultivated Soils Using Soil Test Data, Remote Sensing Imagery from Satellites (Landsat 8 and PlantScope), and Web Soil Survey Data" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3177. https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/etd/3177 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ESTIMATING SOIL ORGANIC CARBON IN CULTIVATED SOILS USING SOIL TEST DATA, REMOTE SENSING IMAGERY FROM SATELLITES (LANDSAT 8 AND PLANETSCOPE), AND WEB SOIL SURVEY DATA BY MUHAMMED HALIL KOPARAN A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Science Major in Plant Science South Dakota State University 2019 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, for providing this great opportunity and funding my thesis and educational training. Special thanks to my academic advisor, Dr. Douglas Malo, for his support, respect, kindness, and valuable academic knowledge. He guided me in the right the direction whenever he thought I needed it. Mary Malo was great grandmother and true friend of me and my family. You will be always with us. This research would not have been possible without their help and support. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. David Clay, Dr. Cheryl Reese, and Dr. Lee Weidauer who were involved in the project. Without their guidance and passion, this research would not have been successfully conducted. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Hossein Moradi Rekabdarkolaee with the South Dakota State University (SDSU) Mathematics and Statistics Department for the valuable hours spent helping me with the statistical data analysis. Without his support, this part of the research would have taken endless time. Also, many thanks to Shaina Westhoff for the hours spent soil sampling and analyzing. She is great person and very kind, and her sons are just cute, we love them. Honestly, I have learned how to make decisions from her (always and forever, ` we will get it done`). It will be great pleasure to host you in Turkey. A special thank you goes to Kunal Sood, a Geographic Information System (GIS) specialist in Himachal Paradesh (HP) State Agriculture University, Centre for Geoinformatics Research and Training, Palampur, India. Even though we had never met before, he is a key partner in this research. The GIS and remote sensing interpolation parts of this study would have been painful without his help and advice. I believe that we will continue this iv friendship and keep contributing something good for humanity. I would also like to thank Christine Morris of the SDSU Soil Testing Lab and Janet M. Miller for providing me protocols and teaching me how to analyze soils. I would also thank to Mr. Wittnebel, Mr. Kleinjan, and Mr. Vanderweerd for providing their fields to use in this study. Finally, I would like to thank my family. Thanks to my sisters and brother for their endless support. My biggest gratitude is to my dad and my mom who wanted me to follow the science and always help humanity. Dad, I know we will meet again. Thanks to you, for your advice and encouragement, I will always be helping people and I will be always carrying your love with me, till the end of my time. To my wife, who never made me think of giving up. She always encouraged me, sacrificed everything that she had for me. My love, you will be always my other half and thank you for our son. You two will be always my everything that I have ever asked from God. May God enlighten all our ways and make our hearts firm with trust and love for Him. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................................... vii LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... xii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... xiv ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... xvii CHAPTER 1: Introduction and Literature Review ............................................................. 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) and Soil Organic Matter (SOM) ........................................ 1 Basic Remote Sensing Processes as Imagery .................................................................. 3 Remote Sensing of Soil Properties .................................................................................. 4 Remote Sensing of Soil Organic Carbon ........................................................................ 8 Effects of Soil Properties on Soil Spectral Feature ....................................................... 11 Web Soil Survey (WSS) ................................................................................................ 14 Research Objectives ...................................................................................................... 15 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 16 CHAPTER 2: Materials and Methods .............................................................................. 21 Study Sites ........................................................................................................................ 21 Soil Sampling ................................................................................................................ 22 Lab Analysis .................................................................................................................. 36 Soil Organic Matter ....................................................................................................... 36 Crop Residue Measurement .......................................................................................... 37 Moisture Content ........................................................................................................... 37 Particle Size ................................................................................................................... 38 Soil pH and Electrical Conductivity (EC) ..................................................................... 40 Sum of Extractable Cations ........................................................................................... 40 4- Phosphorous as Phosphate (PO3 ) ............................................................................... 41 - + Nitrate - N (NO3 -N) and Ammonium -N (NH4 -N) ..................................................... 42 Statistical Analysis ........................................................................................................ 42 Spatial Data Acquisition................................................................................................ 43 Image Processing........................................................................................................... 45 SoilWeb Data Acquisition ............................................................................................. 49 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 51 CHAPTER 3: Results ....................................................................................................... 53 vi Descriptive Statistics of the Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) and Soil Test Data ............... 53 Soil Data Multiple Linear Regression: .......................................................................... 60 Relationship Between SOC and Landsat 8 Data ........................................................... 65 Soil Line Concept to Indicate Bareness of the Study Areas ......................................... 65 Correlation Between SOC and Spatial Data from Landsat 8 ........................................ 67 Multiple Linear Regression for Landsat 8..................................................................... 69 Relationship SOC and PlanetScope Data ...................................................................... 79 Soil Line Concept to Indicate Bareness of the Study Areas ......................................... 79 Correlation Between SOC and Spatial Data from Planet Scope ................................... 80 Model Development with Spatial Data and Web Soil Survey Data (WSS) ................. 92 Model Development Using only WSS Data ................................................................