Diffuse and bi-directional reflectance spectrometry to study European volcanic soils

Diffuse and bi-directional reflectance spectroscopy were applied in this research in order to characterize chemical and mineralogical properties in volcanic soils. The study was conducted on 77 volcanic soil profiles from several European countries. Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy was used in conjuction with parameterization using the second derivative of the Kubelka-Munk function and colour calculation. From derivative curves, one band of interest was characterized and identified around 450 nm. Using correlation analysis, significant relationships were observed between amplitude of this band and Fe-d (r = 0.6). In addition, the data showed that soil organic matter content, Al-d and Fe-p were moderately correlated with reflectance values centered at 546, 579 and 2048 nm.