Crop Canopy Nitrogen Estimation from Mixed Pixels in Agricultural Lands Using Imaging Spectroscopy

Accurate retrieval of canopy nutrient content has been made possible using visible-to-shortwave infrared (VSWIR) imaging spectroscopy. While this strategy has often been tested on closed green plant canopies, little is known about how nutrient content estimates perform when applied to pixels not dominated by photosynthetic vegetation (PV). In such cases, contributions of bare soil (BS) and non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV), may significantly and nonlinearly reduce the spectral features relied upon for nutrient content retrieval. We attempted to define the loss of prediction accuracy under reduced PV fractional cover levels. To do so, we utilized VSWIR imaging spectroscopy data from the Global Airborne Observatory (GAO) and a large collection of lab-calibrated field samples of nitrogen (N) content collected across numerous crop species grown in several farming regions of the United States. Fractional cover values of PV, NPV, and BS were estimated from the GAO data using the Automated Monte Carlo Unmixing algorithm (AutoMCU). Errors in prediction from a partial least squares N model applied to the spectral data were examined in relation to the fractional cover of the unmixed components. We found that the most important factor in the accuracy of the partial least squares regression (PLSR) model is the fraction of photosynthetic vegetation (PV) cover, with pixels greater than 60% cover performing at the optimal level, where the coefficient of determination (R2) peaks to 0.66 for PV fractions of more than 60% and bare soil (BS) fractions of less than 20%. Our findings guide future spaceborne imaging spectroscopy missions as applied to agricultural cropland N monitoring.