About the Programme
The University of St Andrews is pleased to offer a scholarship funded by the Royal and Ancient Foundation to support an exceptional student undertaking research in the following project: Development of rapid, low-cost tools to quantify soil organic carbon.
Supervisors:
Dr Craig Smeaton, School of Geography and Sustainable Development, cs244@st-andrews.ac.uk
Dr William McCarthy, School of Earth and Environmental Science, wm37@st-andrews.ac.uk
The project will be managed jointly between the School of Geography & Sustainable Development and the School of Earth and Environmental Science, University of St Andrews.
Project description:
For full details please find the pdf under ‘Current funded opportunities’ at https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/geography-sustainable-development/prospective/pgr/.
The MSc (Res) will seek to develop new SOC calibrations for both NIR and multispectral data for golf course soils to allow quantification of SOC by non-specialists. The project will develop the NIR calibrations using 3 – 5 golf course with differing characteristics. This will be achieved through the comparison of OC content from different soil samples measured using advanced analytical methods (elemental analysis) and NIR spectra from in-situ and laboratory measurements produced by a handheld spectrometer (NIRvascan or Neospectra). The calibration developed from this analysis will be integrated into an easy-to-use open software package for non-specialist to quantify SOC at their course. At each site a UAV survey will be carried out to produce a multi-spectral map of each course to test the possibility of linking UAV produced spectra to in-situ measurements using the handheld NIR with a view to providing SOC estimates from across large parcels of land on a scale of 0.2 – 10km2.
Objectives
1. Develop a new NIR to OC calibration for golf course soils.
2. Test the quality of low-cost handheld NIR spectrometers.
3. Investigate the possibility of linking multispectral data produced by a UAV to in-situ NIR measurements.
4. Develop of standardised methodology to calculate SOC stock by non-specialists. Communicate and demonstrate the newly developed approach to the measurement of SOC to end-users.
