Download or read book Advances in Proximal Soil Sensing Through Integrated Systems Approach written by Nandkishor Dhawale and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Precision agriculture uses information technologies to improve the economic, environmental and social aspects of modern farming. Among other innovations, the ability to account for spatial variability in the crop growing environment has been the most challenging. The main limitation to the widespread adoption of these technologies has been the lack of economically feasible spatial data to reveal the heterogeneity of soil properties related to local fertilization needs. To increase the implementation of this technology, advanced equipment and methods to obtain high density measurements of the physical and chemical properties of soil at a relatively low cost are essential. The quality of data needed by decision-making algorithms must be improved; this needs the development of, an automated sensing platform for in situ soil measurements, similar to the rovers deployed on Mars. The project focuses on this challenge. The thesis addressed three key aspects of the development of the technology: 1) design of an automated on the-spot soil analyser, 2) evaluation of the potential for deploying different hyperspectral sensor systems, and 3) development of an algorithm to cluster multilayer high density spatial data to maximize the value of prescribed point-based measurements. A new automated, on-the-spot soil analyser (OSA) was developed to perform subsurface measurements of soil chemical properties. It used an array of ion-selective electrodes and could simultaneously determine pH and nitrate, on-the-spot, in an automated manner. The system can be easily extended to use other sensors, such as active, hyperspectral sensors. A set of field deployment-ready instruments for active hyperspectral measurements of soil reflectance were tested in terms of both their reproducibility (precision) and predictability (accuracy) of the measurements and evaluated in terms of their ability to predict soil particle size distribution, soil carbon, soil organic matter, and total soil phosphorous content. This research focused on instruments operating in the visible, near-infrared and mid-infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Finally, a new algorithm was developed to process traditional high-density proximal soil sensing data, such as apparent soil electrical conductivity (ECa) and field elevation. Preliminary tests of the algorithm using six production fields illustrated the algorithm's robustness when delineating field areas with different field elevations and ECa measurements. This algorithm has the potential to optimize the number of point-based measurements with OSA, other in situ sensing systems, or conventional soil sampling. Six individual research activities resulted in six different manuscripts that constitute the main body of this thesis. " --