LAUSR

Abstract Soil color is frequently used by researchers to determine soil properties such as soil organic matter (SOM). However, soil moisture can darken soil color, which seriously limits the accuracy of SOM estimates. This study focused on the influence of soil moisture on the SOM estimate by using our new moisture-based multicolor reconstruction (MMR) method. On the basis of RGB color and moisture values of moist soil samples, the optimal MMR (moist soil) model—root mean square error of validation = 4.537 g/kg, residual prediction deviation of validation = 1.681, ratio of performance to interquartile range of validation = 2.939—was obtained to develop the final model, which performed better than the RGB (moist soil) model. Our method can reduce the influence of soil moisture and increase accuracy for multicolor modeling, and explores a new way to accurately determine the SOM content.