Hunter SMITH

Exogenous organic matter (EOM) amendments are used by agricultural producers to improve agronomic yields and to increase the fertility of the soil. Farmers in the Plaine de Versailles et Plateau de Alluets (PVPA) use a variety of organic amendments including: green compost, sewage sludge, cattle slurry, pig slurry, cattle manure, horse manure, anaerobic digestate, and others (Moinard 2018). The addition of these organic fertilizers has environmental implications, such as the increase of carbon storage in agricultural soils, leaching of nitrates, and emission of greenhouse gases. Due to these implications, it is useful to monitor EOM fertilization practices. Remote monitoring of these practices via satellite imagery offers the potential to acquire this data more efficiently. The Sentinel-2 satellite series is the instrument of choice for this study since it is freely available and offers frequent revisit intervals. Using the Sentinel2 series, the spectral changes that occur following EOM fertilization were documented. The most significantly impacted spectral regions were used to construct three Exogenous Organic Matter Indices (EOMI), which were evaluated based on separability. The EOMI exhibiting the most separability was used to create a time series and map of predicted EOM amendments. The overall results show that the created EOMI can be used to distinguish between bare soil and the EOM fertilization events.