BACKGROUND AND AIMS Growth in trunk height in canopy openings is important for saplings. How saplings increase height growth in canopy openings may relate to crown architectural constraints. Responses of crown development to canopy openings in relation to trunk height growth were studied for saplings (0.2-2.5 m tall) of eight tropical submontane forest tree species in Indonesia. The results of ...

The primary role of a crop canopy is to capture sunlight that can be converted to biomass, including sucrose stored in stalks. Canopy development also has a bearing on the amount of water used by the crop and how soon weeds are shaded out. Cultivars are known to differ in the rate of canopy closure in the field, and also differ in traits that determine canopy development, such as leaf size and ...

Optical instruments currently available for measuring the leaf-area index (LAI) of a plant canopy all utilize only the canopy gap-fraction information. These instruments include the Li-Cor LAI-2000 Plant Canopy Analyzer, Decagon, and Demon. The advantages of utilizing both the canopy gap-fraction and gap-size information are shown. For the purpose of measuring the canopy gap size, a prototype s...

The forest canopy harbors a diverse assemblage of plants of many different growth habits. The reproductive parts of tall trees, many epiphytes, and lianas may exist only in the upper canopy. Access to these upper regions is essential to identify canopy plants and to collect and document voucher specimens for a particular forest region. The majority of botanists, however, have relied on collecti...

The fuel complex variables canopy bulk density and canopy base height are often used to predict crown fire initiation and spread. Direct measurement of these variables is impractical, and they are usually estimated indirectly by modelling. Recent advances in predicting crown fire behaviour require accurate estimates of the complete vertical distribution of canopy fuels. The objectives of the pr...

Gap characteristics and effects of gaps on plasticity of Fargesia qinlingensis and tree regeneration were studied under canopy, and in small, medium, and large gaps in a mixed hardwood-conifer forest in the Qinling Mountains, China. Gap formation was mainly tree snapping (40%). Gapmakers were dominated by Betula albosinensis and Abies fargesii (85%). Gap area ranged from 23.8 to 594.2 m and ave...

Understanding and simulating plant canopy conditions can assist in better acknowledgment of plant microclimate characteristics, its effect on plant processes, and the influence of management and climate scenarios. The ability of the Simultaneous Heat and Water (SHAW) model to simulate the surface energy balance and profiles of leaf temperature and micrometeorological variables within a maize ca...

Spatially distributed information on canopy parameters is an important input to precision agriculture. Remote sensing data, and especially high-resolution hyperspectral data of sensors such as the multi-directional satellite-sensor CHRIS or the airborne spectrometer AVIS provide such information. In order to derive the canopy parameters leaf area index and fraction of mature material as well as...

The concept of canopy spectral invariants expresses the observation that simple algebraic combinations of leaf and canopy spectral reflectance become wavelength independent and determine two canopy structure specific variables – the recollision and escape probabilities. These variables specify an accurate relationship between the spectral response of a vegetation canopy to incident solar radiat...