Compared to temperate systems, there have been few detailed assessments of canopy characteristics and associated grazing behavior in planted tropical grasslands. Reasons include the large number of forage species used in warm climates, the diversity of their morphology, research priorities emphasizing germplasm evaluation and management, and limited resources. This review describes canopy attri...

Accurate, spatially explicit information about forest canopy fuel properties is essential for ecosystem management strategies for reducing the severity of forest fires. Airborne LiDAR technology has demonstrated its ability to accurately map canopy fuels. However, its geographical and temporal coverage is limited, thus making it difficult to characterize fuel properties over large regions befor...

The study was aimed at the quantitative evaluation of the temporal and spatial partitioning of non-structural carbohydrates and needle biomass in a canopy of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) growing in a Myrtillus site type forest stand (predominant in Estonia). The tree canopy was divided into ten equal layers and the material for the spatial partitioning of the investigated characteristics wa...

A strong positive correlation between vegetation canopy bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) in the near infrared (NIR) spectral region and foliar mass-based nitrogen concentration (%N) has been reported in some temperate and boreal forests. This relationship, if true, would indicate an additional role for nitrogen in the climate system via its influence on surface albedo and may offer a simp...

Stably stratified canopy flow in complex terrain has been considered a difficult condition for measuring net ecosystem–atmosphere exchanges of carbon, water vapor, and energy. A long-standing advection error in eddy-flux measurements is caused by stably stratified canopy flow. Such a condition with strong thermal gradient and less turbulent air is also difficult for modeling. To understand the ...

Surface roughness parameters, namely the roughness length and displacement height, are an integral input used to model surface fluxes. However, most models assume these parameters to be a fixed property of plant functional type and disregard the governing structural heterogeneity and dynamics. In this study, we use large-eddy simulations to explore, in silico, the effects of canopy-structure ch...

A new approach is presented for deriving vegetation INTRODUCTION canopy structural characteristics from hyperspectral bidiSeveral climate simulation models indicate that the rectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) data. northern latitudes will experience a significant temperaThe methodology is based on the relationship between ture increase as a result of increasing levels of atmospe...

CONTEXT Due to a long history of intensive forest exploitation, few European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) old-growth forests have been preserved in Europe. MATERIAL AND METHODS We studied two beech forest reserves in southern Slovenia. We examined the structural characteristics of the two forest reserves based on data from sample plots and complete inventory obtained from four previous forest m...

There is less published research on ecosystems of forested rangeland in Iran. This research was conducted to investigate the forested rangeland area based on legal definition via comparison of indices species richness, diversity, and morphology of the trees and shrubs in Sabzkouh watershed, Chaharmahal Bakhtiari province, Iran. Quantitative characteristics of trees and shrubs were measured by 5...

The first European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA collaboration in an airborne campaign to support ESA’s FLuorescence EXplorer (FLEX) mission was conducted in North Carolina, USA during September–October 2013 (FLEX-US 2013) at the Parker Tract Loblolly Pine (LP) Plantation (Plymouth, NC, USA). This campaign combined two unique airborne instrument packages to obtain simultaneous observations of sol...