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...

Leaf life span is an important plant trait associated with interspecific variation in leaf, organismal, and ecosystem processes. We hypothesized that intraspecific variation in gymnosperm needle traits with latitude reflects both selection and acclimation for traits adaptive to the associated temperature and moisture gradient. This hypothesis was supported, because across 127 sites along a 2,16...

The overall design of an industrial crop production system should optimize the system's global parameters, such as total area required, intensity of cultivation and general production schedule. The key element is the optimal intensity of cultivation for the prevailing climatic and economic environments. A single-state-variable vegetative crop model (e.g. lettuce) was used to optimize a crop pro...

ABSTRACT Ophiosphaerella agrostis, the causal agent of dead spot of creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera), can produce prodigious numbers of pseudothecia and ascospores throughout the summer. The environmental conditions and seasonal timings associated with O. agrostis ascospore release are unknown. The objectives of this research were to (i) determine the influence of light and relative hu...

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...