To understand the social, political, economic, and ecological implications of historic land use patterns of Caracol, one of the largest (~200 sq km) Maya archaeological sites, we are conducting a regional survey using satellite and airborne sensors. About one-fifth of this polity has been mapped with traditional ground-based methods. In this NASA-funded project, we acquired Landsat TM/ETM, IKON...

250 words) Recent development of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) technology is stimulating studies to remotely approximate canopy photosynthesis (measured as gross primary production, GPP). While multiple applications have advanced the empirical relationship between GPP and SIF, mechanistic understanding of this relationship is still limited. GPP:SIF relationship, using the standard ...

Canopy structure has an important role to play in determining the searching patterns of predators of insect pests in crops. The connections between plants within the canopy are crucial in determining the ability of predators to move around the canopy. Virtual plant models provide an ideal method for providing a realistic background for modelling the movement of insects in plant canopies. Experi...

Both Imaging Spectrometry and LIDAR have been already investigated as independent data sources to describe and quantify forests properties. While Imaging Spectrometry provides information on the biochemical and biophysical properties of the canopy, LIDAR resolves the spatial and vertical distribution of the canopy structure (1, 2). The presented contribution outlines a concept how these two com...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Globally, conifer dominance is restricted to nutient-poor habitats in colder, drier or waterlogged environments, probably due to competition with angiosperms. Analysis of canopy structure is important for understanding the mechanism of plant coexistence in relation to competition for light. Most conifers are shade intolerant, and often have narrow, deep, conical crowns. In t...

Plant canopy structure can strongly affect crop functions such as yield and stress tolerance, and canopy size is an important aspect of canopy structure. Manual assessment of canopy size is laborious and imprecise, and cannot measure multi-dimensional traits such as projected leaf area and canopy volume. Field-based high throughput phenotyping systems with imaging capabilities can rapidly acqui...

A complex geometric model for describing the 3D structure of plant canopies is presented. The Botanical Plant Modelling System (BPMS) allows a complete (topologically accurate) 3D geometric description of a canopy to be constructed. The model can be used for simulating the optical scattered radiation field of plant canopies, soil, or other topography through Monte Carlo ray tracing, which provi...

The forest canopy harbors a diverse assemblage of plants of many different growth habits. The reproductive parts of tall trees, many epiphytes, and lianas may exist only in the upper canopy. Access to these upper regions is essential to identify canopy plants and to collect and document voucher specimens for a particular forest region. The majority of botanists, however, have relied on collecti...

Spatially distributed information on canopy parameters is an important input to precision agriculture. Remote sensing data, and especially high-resolution hyperspectral data of sensors such as the multi-directional satellite-sensor CHRIS or the airborne spectrometer AVIS provide such information. In order to derive the canopy parameters leaf area index and fraction of mature material as well as...