Author
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Reeves Iii, James |
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Submitted to: USDA Symposium on Natural Resource Management to Offset Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Publication Type: Abstract Only Publication Acceptance Date: 11/19/2002 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: Summary Technical Abstract: Traditional methods for the determination of soil C content include chromate oxidation and combustion. Chromate oxidation generates hazardous waste and does not accurately determine all the organic soil C. Combustion methods while generating little in the way of wastes require two determinations to determine organic and inorganic C. In addition, neither method can be said to be potentially field portable. Spectroscopic methods such as NIR and MIDIR have recently been shown to be capable of accurately and simultaneously determining both organic and inorganic C in a variety of soils. Neither method generates any waste or requires expensive consumables and both offer the possibility of field portable instrumentation. Results starting with a set of 180 samples of similar nature, to 237 samples from a wide area of the western US have demonstrated that spectroscopic calibrations for organic and inorganic soil C offer a potential method for rapidly and accurately analyzing the multitude of samples needed for many studies. However, results have demonstrated that different calibration methods may be required for NIR versus MIDIR due to differences in the ability of calibrations from each spectral range to cover widely differing soil types. While it appears at the present time that MIDIR calibrations are more robust than comparable NIR calibrations, further efforts are needed to answer this question. |
