Browsing by Author "Haikarainen, Iina"

Leaf area index (LAI) is an important biophysical variable which helps to estimate vegetation biomass, radiation use efficiency and potential yield. Traditional LAI-determination methods tend to be slow and they require a lot of labor and data processing. Vegetation indices are one way to estimate LAI of the crops, but it is hard to create a vegetation index that would be suitable for all crops, environments and optical occasions. This is caused by saturation of indices under high LAI and differences in structure between various crop species Leaf inclination angle affects spectral reflectance with LAI (Zou et al. 2014, Zou & Mõttus 2015, Zou et al. 2015). The aim of this study was to investigate effects of leaf inclination angle on LAI-sensitive vegetation indices. LAI-sensitive narrow-band vegetation indices were selected from literature and they were calculated based on reflectance of measured field data and simulated model data. After calculation of vegetation indices, regression between vegetation indices and LAI was performed. Regression was performed with both true field data and simulated model data. Finally, simulated data was plotted based on mean leaf tilt angles (20, 30, 40, 50 and 65) and on low, medium and high chlorophyll contents (25-30, 55-60, 95-100). Regression was determined between vegetation indices and LAI based on plotted data. LAI could be estimated from vegetation indices in true field data (R2=0,36-0,52, RMSE 0,65-0,74 m2/m2) and simulated model data (R2=0,25-0,52, RMSE 0,81-1,02 m2/m2) and they acted similarly. When simulated data was plotted, coefficients of determination were higher (R2=0,50-0,99, RMSE 0,12-0,91 m2/m2). The best goodness of fit was found under MTA-levels 40 and 50. Lowest coefficients of determination occurred on highest MTA-level. Chlorophyll amount effected on the way MTA effects on indices performance: variance between MTA-classes seems to be larger under higher chlorophyll levels. As expected, leaf inclination angle affects performance of LAI-sensitive vegetation indices, and chlorophyll amount has effect on this. These observations should be taken into account while choosing index to estimate LAI of crops.