Spectra assessment for the soil Hg contamination

Conventional methods investigating soil Hg contamination are time-consuming and expensive. A quicker method is developed to predict soil Hg content with convolved HyMap, ASTER, and TM spectra. The prediction accuracy for each sensor is satisfactory and similar. It suggests that low spectral resolution is not a limitation for predicting soil Hg content. Correlation analysis reveals that Hg -sorption by iron oxides is the mechanism by which to predict spectrally featureless Hg with reflectance spectra. Future study with field measurements and remote sensing data is recommended.