Estimation of the influence of soil moisture on soil colour

Soil colour was expressed in terms of chromaticity coordinates instead of traditional Munsell notations which facilitated correlation with the moisture content of soils. Spectral reflectance of twenty-one soil samples was measured in the visible region from saturation to air-dryness from which the colour coordinates for each soil at various moisture levels were calculated. The data were transformed to metric lightness, metric chroma and Munsell values using the tables of Wyszecki and Stiles (1982). All the colour coordinates, metric lightness, metric chroma and Munsell value were negatively correlated with the moisture content. For dark soils, the rate of change of colour parameters with moisture is less compared to red and light coloured alluvial soils. An interesting feature of the study is that all the colour parameters converged to a characteric value for a group of soils at zero moisture level (intercept), which will be useful to assess the moisture status of a soil in that group from the regression equations, if the colour of soil is estimated in terms of spectral parameters.