TY - JOUR T1 - Mapping surface soil organic carbon for crop fields with remote sensing JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 51 LP - 57 VL - 60 IS - 1 AU - F. Chen AU - D.E. Kissel AU - L.T. West AU - D. Rickman AU - J.C. Luvall AU - W. Adkins Y1 - 2005/01/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/60/1/51.abstract N2 - The soil organic carbon (C) concentration of surface soil can be used in agricultural fields to vary crop production inputs. Soil organic C is often highly spatially variable, so that maps of soil organic carbon can be used to vary crop production inputs using precision farming technology. The objective of this research was to demonstrate the feasibility of mapping soil organic carbon on three fields, using remotely sensed images of the fields with a bare surface. Soil samples covering the range in soil organic carbon were taken from each field to develop a satisfactory relationship between soil organic carbon content and image reflectance values. The regression equations differed between fields, but gave highly significant relationships with R2 values of 0.93, 0.95, and 0.89 for the three fields. Two classifications, arbitrarily classification and a minimum distance clustering, were applied in mapping soil organic carbon. A comparison of mapped soil organic carbon with an independent set of 21 soil samples taken on one of the fields gave highly satisfactory results for the two methods with r2 = 0.81 and 087. ER -