The relationship between leaf area and diameter at breast height (d.b.h.) or sapwood area (AS) has been used to estimate stand leaf area or biomass of forest canopies. It has been suggested that intra-specifi c variations in the relationship between stand leaf area and d.b.h. or AS can introduce a systematic error in these estimates for younger and older stands unless additional parameters rela...

I evaluated the use of global remote sensing techniques for estimating plant leaf chlorophyll a + b (C(ab); μg cm(-2)) and water (C(w); mg cm(-2)) concentrations as well as the ratio of C(w)/C(ab) with the PROSAIL model under possible distributions for leaf and soil spectra, leaf area index (LAI), canopy geometric structure, and leaf size. First, I estimated LAI from the normalized difference v...

Leaf gas exchange, water potential, and specific leaf area of two tropical semi-deciduous tree species, Brosimum lactescens S. Moore and Tovomita schomburgkii Planch & Triana, were quantified to establish how these properties were affected by seasonal variations in rainfall and leaf canopy position. The study was conducted at a site near Sinop Mato Grosso, Brazil, which is located within the ec...

A Soil-Plant Analysis Development (SPAD) chlorophyll meter can be used as a simple tool for evaluating N concentration of the leaf and investigating the combined effects of nitrogen rate and leaf age on N distribution. We conducted experiments in a paddy field over two consecutive years (2008-2009) using rice plants treated with six different N application levels. N distribution pattern was det...

Canopy photosynthesis models have predicted an optimal leaf area index (LAI; leaf area per unit surface area) and leaf nitrogen distribution at which whole-plant carbon gain per unit N is maximized. In this study we experimentally tested these models, using transgenic P(SAG12)-IPT tobacco (SAG; Nicotiana tabacum L.) plants with delayed leaf senescence and therefore a greater LAI and more unifor...

Plant phenology, a sensitive indicator of climate change, influences vegetation-atmosphere interactions by changing the carbon and water cycles from local to global scales. Camera-based phenological observations of the color changes of the vegetation canopy throughout the growing season have becomepopular in recent years. However, the linkages between camera phenological metrics and leaf bioche...

Annual fluxes of canopy-level heat, water vapour and carbon dioxide were measured using eddy covariance both above the aspen overstory (Populus tremuloides Michx.) and hazelnut understory (Corylus cornuta Marsh.) of a boreal aspen forest (53Ð629 °N 106Ð200 °W). Partitioning of the fluxes between overstory and understory components allowed the calculation of canopy conductance to water vapour fo...

Many current vegetation–atmosphere models require structural information describing the canopy in order to calculate rates of mass and energy exchange. One of the most important pieces of information is the variation with height in leaf area density, ρ (m2 leaf area per m3 canopy volume), but it is notoriously difficult to measure this in forest canopies. Consequently, very few data on ρ exist ...

Although there have been several studies on the spectral characteristics related to leaf water content, it remains unclear whether the spectral property of leaves can be extended to the canopy-level. In this study, we attempt to compare the spectral characteristics of forest vegetation in moderate drought condition observed by laboratory measurement and satellite hyperspectral image data. Spect...

eight genotypes of spring safflower (carthamus tinctorius l.) were evaluated for several physiological traits under stress and non-stress water regimes. data were analyzed using principal factor analysis. the factor analysis technique extracted six factors under non-stress conditions. six factors explained about 80% of the total variation, and only 40% of the variance was accounted for by the f...