TROPIRES Summer School Uganda August 19–23 2024

Cost-efficient spectroscopy for soil analyses

Leonardo Ramirez-Lopez, Moritz Mainka, Laura Summerauer

The workshop

This is the main repository of the workshop II entitled "Cost-efficient spectroscopy for soil analyses".

The main objective of our workshop was to immerse students in a practical experience where they could grasp the principles, benefits, and limitations of soil spectroscopy. To achieve this, we concentrated on the use of handheld sensors. The students developed their own predictive models using open-source software and by utilising existing soil NIR databases. These models were then uploaded into a handheld system. Afterwards, they went into the field to carry out real-time estimations of the carbon content across soil profiles.

Our learning objectives

• Understand NIR and IR Spectroscopy and soil spectral libraries

• Evaluate capabilities and limitations

• Gain hands-on experience with portable spectroscopy and estimations

• Interpret spectral data for soil management

• Dive into the Data Science aspects required for soil spectroscopy (with R)

In this repository

• The core slides using during the workshop are in the folder slides_presentations/

• The core functions and examples are in the folder R/. Here you will also find the instructions on how to install the R library proximaterwhich was intensively used during the workshop (see install_proximater.R).

• The main data are in the folder data/

• The data generated by the students are in the folder data/00output