Digital repeat photography is becoming widely used for near-surface remote sensing of vegetation. Canopy greenness, which has been used extensively for phenological applications, can be readily quantified from camera images. Important questions remain, however, as to whether the observed changes in canopy greenness are directly related to changes in leaf-level traits, changes in canopy structur...

[1] This study investigates the impacts of canopy structure specification on modeling net radiation (Rn), latent heat flux (LE) and net photosynthesis (An) by coupling two contrasting radiation transfer models with a two-leaf photosynthesis model for a maturing loblolly pine stand near Durham, North Carolina, USA. The first radiation transfer model is based on a uniform canopy representation (U...

Virtual geographic environments (VGEs) have been regarded as an important new means of simulating, analyzing, and understanding complex geological processes. Plants and light are major components of the geographic environment. Light is a critical factor that affects ecological systems. In this study, we focused on simulating light transmission and distribution within a three-dimensional plant c...

Detailed knowledge of light interactions between the atmosphere and vegetation, and within vegetation are of particular interest for terrestrial carbon cycle studies and optical remote sensing. This study describes a model for 3-D canopy radiative transfer that is directly coupled with an atmospheric radiative transfer model (Forest Light Environmental Simulator, FLiES). The model was developed...

Canopy gaps play an essential role in continuous cover forests, as they have a strong effect on regeneration dynamics and species composition. However, canopy gaps have been widely neglected in current monitoring and planning practices, which might be caused by the fact that mapping of canopy gaps from the ground is labour-intensive, tedious, and error prone. An approach to automated canopy gap...

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...

Remotely sensed vegetation indices have been extensively used to quantify plant and soil characteristics. The objectives of this study were to: (i) compare vegetation indices developed at different scales for measuring canopy N content (g∙N∙m −2 ) and concentration (%); and (ii) evaluate the effects of soil background reflectance, cultivar, illumination and atmospheric conditions on the ability...

Canopy characterization is essential for pesticide dosage adjustment according to vegetation volume and density. It is especially important for fresh exportable vegetables like greenhouse tomatoes. These plants are thin and tall and are planted in pairs, which makes their characterization with electronic methods difficult. Therefore, the accuracy of the terrestrial 2D LiDAR sensor is evaluated ...

A three-dimensional computer model of canopies of the seagrass Amphibolis griffithii was used to investigate the consequences of variations in canopy structure and benthic light environment on leaf-level photosynthetic saturation state. The model was constructed using empirical data of plant morphometrics from a previously conducted shading experiment and validated well to in-situ data on light...

Strong positive correlations between the maximum rate of canopy photosynthesis, canopy-averaged foliar nitrogen concentration, and canopy albedo have been shown in previous studies. While leaf-level relationships between photosynthetic capacity and foliar nitrogen are well documented, it is not clear whether leaf-level relationships between solarweighted reflectance and nitrogen underlie the ca...