Characterizing Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Vertical Foliage Profile (VFP)

Characterizing leaf area index (LAI) and vertical foliage profile (VFP) over the United States

Leaf area index (LAI) and vertical foliage profile (VFP) are among the important canopy structural variables. Recent advances in lidar remote sensing technology have demonstrated the capability of accurately mapping LAI and VFP over large areas. The primary objective of this study was to derive and validate a LAI and VFP product over the contiguous United States (CONUS) using spaceborne wavefor...

Interactive comment on “Characterizing Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Vertical Foliage Profile (VFP) over the United States” by H. Tang et al

The referee is correct about the bias introduced by seasonality, and a simple average of GLAS LAI over different months supports this hypothesis: 3.02 for May, 3.14 for June, 2.93 for October and 2.22 for November. However, we did not exclude the leaf flushing/senescence periods because we tried to maximize the usage of GLAS shots. The GLAS/ICESat mission was not operated year round but deploye...

Large-scale retrieval of leaf area index and vertical foliage profile from the spaceborne waveform lidar (GLAS/ICESat)

Tropical Forests of Réunion Island Classified from Airborne Full-Waveform LiDAR Measurements

From an unprecedented experiment using airborne measurements performed over the rich forests of Réunion Island, this paper aims to present a methodology for the classification of diverse tropical forest biomes as retrieved from vertical profiles measured using a full-waveform LiDAR. This objective is met through the retrieval of both the canopy height and the Leaf Area Index (LAI), obtained as ...

Estimation of leaf area and its vertical distribution during growth period

A statistical interpolation method is proposed which allows calculation of the leaf area index LAI(t), the downward cumulative leaf area index L(z, t) and the canopy leaf area density u(z, t) as the functions of height and time for any day of the growth period. The method is based on three functions: probability density of stem height, interrelationship between stem height and stem foliage area...