Estimating Soil Solution Nitrate Concentration from Dielectric Spectra Using Partial Least Squares Analysis

Abstract

<p>Fast and reliable methods for in situ monitoring of soil NO₃–N concentration could help guide efforts to reduce NO₃–N losses to ground and surface waters from agricultural systems. While several studies have been done to indirectly estimate NO₃–N concentrations from time domain spectra, no research has been conducted using a frequency domain technique. Hence, the goal of this laboratory study was to estimate NO₃–N concentrations from frequency-response data obtained in a frequency range of 5 Hz to 13 MHz. Dielectric spectra of soil samples wetted to five different volumetric water contents (VWC) with 24 solutions containing different concentrations of KNO₃ and KCl were analyzed using a partial least squares (PLS) regression method. Global models could not estimate NO₃–N concentrations with sufficient accuracy. Models based on the imaginary part of the permittivity were better than those based on the real part. The PLS model estimates were improved when low VWC data and high Cl⁻ concentration were eliminated, reducing the RMSE for NO₃–N from 57 to 28 mg L⁻¹. The best results were obtained when the PLS models were constructed at fixed VWC levels using the data without high Cl⁻ concentration. The performance of these models improved with increasing VWC level, reaching the lowest RMSE of 18 mg L⁻¹ at VWC of 0.30 m³ m⁻³.</p>