Acquisition of a Field Spectroradiometer

This grant supports acquisition of a field portable spectroradiometer which can image sample reflected light wavelengths across a wide spectrum (350-2500 nm) and with nanometer scale spectral resolution and associated data reduction software. The spectroradiometer will support faculty and student research and research training in the Department of Geosciences at Boise State University. The spectroradiometer and associated data reduction software will be used with a range of studies addressing NSF's 10 Big Ideas, including Growing Convergent Research at NSF, Harnessing Data for 21st Century Science and Engineering, and Understanding the Rules of Life: Predicting Phenotype. The investigators are actively engaged in a university-wide Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program and an NSF EPSCoR Undergraduate Research and Internships program. The researchers will use the spectroradiometer for experiential learning as part of these outreach and education efforts. This support is congruent with NSFs mission of promoting the progress of science and advancing the national health, prosperity and welfare given the societal relevance of targeted research aimed at understanding the terrestrial water cycle with implications for improved water resource management and the impact of the acquisition on training the next generation scientific workforce.

Research applications include studies of inorganic and organic soil carbon and its biogeochemical cycling and post-fire redistribution of carbon in the Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed Critical Zone Observatory site. Question to be addressed include: 1) What are the controls on the distribution and amounts of organic and inorganic soil carbon? ; and 2) How do fire severity, vegetation type, and soil texture affect the redistribution of soil nutrients and soil organic carbon? The field spectroradiometer will be used in both the field and lab settings by students and faculty associated with several NSF Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) and related program studies, including the Reynolds Creek Critical Zone Observatory (RC-CZO). The investigators and their students will correlate measurements of soil organic and inorganic carbon from laboratory-based carbon analyses with spectroscopy of soils in the lab and field settings. The statistical relationships between the carbon and inorganic carbon measurements and the soil spectra will be applied to independent soil spectra in the field and laboratory to increase the number of observations of soil carbon, while reducing cost and time associated with the assay measurements. The increased number of soil carbon observations will increase the spatial resolution and confidence of soil carbon maps as well as the understanding of the controls on soil carbon. Similarly, soil and vegetation spectra will be collected in the field to be used as endmembers with imaging spectroscopy to map the vegetation and soils of a post-fire study. This information will be used to help understand post-fire redistribution of soil nutrients and organic carbon, and what role vegetation plays in regulating the delivery of sediment across a dryland ecosystem (in which wind erosion is dominant). Additional applications include studies of land use change on vegetation-land surface-atmosphere interactions and hydrologic cycling and studies of snowpack spectral properties to better model water and energy balance. These applications are also focused on predicting spring snow melt timing and magnitude to improve water resource management. The support will also be used for spectral classification of sagebrush-steppe ecosystem vegetation-soil-water interactions to improve large scale remote sensing modality image classification algorithms.