Vibrational spectroscopy in soil and sediment analysis

The literature concerning the use of vibrational spectroscopy for soil and sediment analysis, published in the last years, has been revised in order to provide a picture of the strengths and weaknesses of these direct techniques to characterize soil composition and properties. Many soil components as water, organic matter, like humic substances, and minerals, can be determined together with physicochemical parameters as pH, conductivity or redox potential. The main strategies to obtain sample spectra and to extract, as many as possible, useful information were evaluated, taking into account the progress on chemometrics and discussing the whole analytical process, from sampling to sample preparation, spectrum measurement and data treatment.