The burgeoning demand on the world food supply, coupled with concern over the use of chemical fertilizers, has led to an accelerated interest in the practice of precision agriculture. This practice involves the careful control and monitoring of plant nutrition to maximize the rate of growth and yield of crops, as well as their nutritional value.
The rapid conversion of land to urban and suburban areas has profoundly altered how water flows during and following storm events, putting higher volumes of water and more pollutants into the nation's rivers, lakes, and estuaries. These changes have degraded water quality and habitat in virtually every urban stream system. The Clean Water Act regulatory framework for addressing sewage and industrial wastes is not well suited to the more difficult problem of stormwater discharges. This book calls for an entirely new permitting structure that would put authority and accountability for stormwater discharges at the municipal level. A number of additional actions, such as conserving natural areas, reducing hard surface cover (e.g., roads and parking lots), and retrofitting urban areas with features that hold and treat stormwater, are recommended.
This book reports on developments in Proximal Soil Sensing (PSS) and high resolution digital soil mapping. PSS has become a multidisciplinary area of study that aims to develop field-based techniques for collecting information on the soil from close by, or within, the soil. Amongst others, PSS involves the use of optical, geophysical, electrochemical, mathematical and statistical methods. This volume, suitable for undergraduate course material and postgraduate research, brings together ideas and examples from those developing and using proximal sensors and high resolution digital soil maps for applications such as precision agriculture, soil contamination, archaeology, peri-urban design and high land-value applications, where there is a particular need for high spatial resolution information. The book in particular covers soil sensor sampling, proximal soil sensor development and use, sensor calibrations, prediction methods for large data sets, applications of proximal soil sensing, and high-resolution digital soil mapping. Key themes: soil sensor sampling – soil sensor calibrations – spatial prediction methods – reflectance spectroscopy – electromagnetic induction and electrical resistivity – radar and gamma radiometrics – multi-sensor platforms – high resolution digital soil mapping - applications Raphael A. Viscarra Rossel is a scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) of Australia. Alex McBratney is Pro-Dean and Professor of Soil Science in the Faculty of Agriculture Food & Natural Resources at the University of Sydney in Australia. Budiman Minasny is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Agriculture Food & Natural Resources at the University of Sydney in Australia.