New method simplifies soil carbon measurement through AI

At a time when addressing climate change is gaining more and more attention, a Brazilian innovation promises to transform carbon measurement in soils. Researchers from Embrapa Instrumentation have developed a method that uses laser and artificial intelligence to estimate, in a single analysis, the carbon content stored in the soil. The solution simplifies traditional, time-consuming processes, reduces costs, and can accelerate initiatives linked to carbon credit markets. Combining photonics – technology that manipulates light particles, photons – and a machine learning model, the method quickly and efficiently estimates the apparent density of the soil and the carbon content. The solution is suitable for large-scale field applications, such as precision agriculture and environmental monitoring. The technique is based on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). Thus, it replaces, in a single analysis, separate measurements of apparent density and carbon concentration. To ...