Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy for Black Carbon Screening of Agricultural Soils under Industrial Anthropopressure

Visible and near-infrared spectroscopy (VIS-NIRS) is a fast and simple method increasingly used in soil science. This study aimed to investigate VIS-NIRS applicability to predict soil black carbon (BC) content and the method’s suitability for rapid BC-level screening. Forty-three soil samples were collected in an agricultural area remaining under strong industrial impact. Soil texture, pH, total nitrogen (N(tot)) and total carbon (C(tot)), soil organic carbon (SOC), soil organic matter (SOM), and BC were analyzed. Samples were divided into three classes according to BC content (low, medium, and high BC content) and scanned in the 350–2500 nm range. A support vector machine (SVM) was used to develop prediction models of soil properties. Partial least-square with SVM (PLS-SVM) was used to classify samples for screening purposes. Prediction models of soil properties were at best satisfactory (N(tot): R(2) = 0.76, RMSE(CV) = 0.59 g kg(−1), RPIQ = 0.65), due to large kurtosis and data skewness. The RMSE(CV) were large (16.86 g kg(−1) for SOC), presumably due to the limited number of samples available and the wide data spread. Given our results, the VIS-NIRS method seems efficient for classifying soil samples from an industrialized area according to BC content level (training accuracy of 77% and validation accuracy of 81%).