The aim of this study is to analyse the relationship between spectral reflectance measurements and the water content of wheat canopies based on the Water Index WI (R900/R970) of Peñuelas et al. (i) and a modified version of this index. For this purpose, reflectance measurements over a full phenological cycle of four wheat canopies using an ASD FieldSpec II spectroradiometer have been performed....

Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. [1] This paper describes the transition from open channel flow to flow over submerged vegetation using velocity mea...

Title of Document: ENHANCEMENT OF A CANOPY REFLECTANCE MODEL FOR UNDERSTANDING THE SPECULAR AND SPECTRAL EFFECTS OF AN AQUATIC BACKGROUND IN AN INUNDATED TIDAL MARSH Kevin Ross Turpie, Ph.D., 2012 Directed By: Professor Michael Kearney, Department of Geographical Sciences The presence of water produces unique specular and spectral characteristics in an inundated tidal marsh canopy. The aquatic ...

Evaporation from the soil surface (E) can be a significant source of water loss in arid areas. In sparsely vegetated systems, E is expected to be a function of soil, climate, irrigation regime, precipitation patterns, and plant canopy development and will therefore change dynamically at both daily and seasonal time scales. The objectives of this research were to quantify E in an isolated, drip-...

Turbulent fluxes of carbon, water and energy were measured at the Wind River Canopy Crane, Washington, USA from 1999 to 2004 with eddy-covariance instrumentation above (67 m) and below (2.5 m) the forest canopy. Here we present the decomposition of net ecosystem exchange of carbon (NEE) into gross primary productivity (GPP), ecosystem respiration (R(eco)) and tree canopy net CO(2) exchange (Del...

The application of high-throughput plant phenotyping (HTPP) to continuously study plant populations under relevant growing conditions creates the possibility to more efficiently dissect the genetic basis of dynamic adaptive traits. Toward this end, we employed a field-based HTPP system that deployed sets of sensors to simultaneously measure canopy temperature, reflectance, and height on a cotto...

Managers of the nearly 0.5 million ha of public lands in North and South Dakota, USA rely heavily on manual measurements of canopy height in autumn to ensure conservation of grassland structure for wildlife and forage for livestock. However, more comprehensive assessment of vegetation structure could be achieved for mixed-grass prairie by integrating field survey, topographic position (summit, ...

Leaf properties vary significantly within plant canopies, due to the strong gradient in light availability through the canopy, and the need for plants to use resources efficiently. At high light, photosynthesis is maximized when leaves have a high nitrogen content and water supply, whereas at low light leaves have a lower requirement for both nitrogen and water. Studies of the distribution of l...

Leaf area and its spatial distribution are key canopy parameters needed to model the radiation regime within a forest and to compute the mass and energy exchange between a forest and the atmosphere. A much larger proportion of available net radiation is received at the forest floor in open-canopy forests than in closed-canopy forests. The proportion of ecosystem water vapor exchange (lambda E) ...