דוקטורנטים מספרים - Nicolas Francos
Estimating Soil-Surface-Related Properties Using Soil Spectral Libraries by Means of Remote-Sensing
Nicolas Francos
Supervisor: Prof. Eyal Ben-Dor
My name is Nicolas Francos, and I am a second year Ph.D. student at the remote sensing laboratory (RSL) in the department of Geography. I am interested in remote sensing (RS), geographic information systems (GIS), data analysis, soil sciences, and physical geography, among other things…
Soil Spectral Libraries (SSLs) are datasets that contain chemical and/or physical soil properties, as well as spectral measurements. Nowadays, several SSLs are being created worldwide because these datasets have notable potential to be used as training datasets for machine learning algorithms that can benefit agricultural activities. However, traditional SSLs are commonly created with laboratory measurements, so they contain disturbed soil samples due to sampling procedures. Therefore, they do not represent the remote sensing (RS) view from the orbit. As a result, I am looking for the optimal way to reduce the gap between laboratory and field reflectance measurements for better utilization of traditional SSLs to apply spectral-based models in satellite and airborne remote sensing data. To this end, my main focus in this study is on the water infiltration rate (WIR), because it is closely related to the condition of the upper soil layer.
In this era of climate change, in which floods and droughts are becoming more commonplace every day, WIR is a critical parameter for water management and for farmers. Thus, optimizing WIR monitoring is very important to save water and avoid environmental disasters.
