Application of PROSPECT for estimating total petroleum hydrocarbons in contaminated soils from leaf optical properties

• Published in: Journal of hazardous materials 2019-09, Vol.377, p.409-417
• Main Authors: Lassalle, Guillaume, Fabre, Sophie, Credoz, Anthony, Hédacq, Rémy, Bertoni, Georges, Dubucq, Dominique, Elger, Arnaud
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biodiversity and Ecology; Environment and Society; Environmental Sciences; Leaf optical properties; Pigment; PROSPECT; Soil contamination; Total petroleum hydrocarbons
• ISSN: 0304-3894; 1873-3336
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2019.05.093

[Display omitted] •PROSPECT was used for predicting oil contamination from leaf optical properties.•The method relied on the detection of oil-induced alterations in leaf pigments.•The method performed well for predicting Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons in the field.•The accuracy of predictions varied among species and throughout a seasonal cycle.•PROSPECT can be used for monitoring oil contamination over industrial sites. Recent advances in hyperspectral spectroscopy suggest making use of leaf optical properties for monitoring soil contamination in oil production regions by detecting pigment alterations induced by Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPH). However, this provides no quantitative information about the level of contamination. To achieve this, we propose an approach based on the inversion of the PROSPECT model. 1620 leaves from five species were collected on a site contaminated by 16 to 77 g.kg−1 of TPH over a 14-month period. Their spectral signature was measured and used in PROSPECT model inversions to retrieve leaf biochemistry. The model performed well for simulating the spectral signatures (RMSE