Coniferous forests represent canopies with a high heterogeneity in the horizontal and as well in the vertical dimension. Consequently the interaction of incident radiation is dominated by the complex 3-D canopy structure and architecture. Radiative transfer approaches based on coupled leaf and canopy radiative transfer models (RTM) still allow the simulation of the multidirectional canopy refle...

The position of the inflexion point in the red edge (680 nm to 780 nm), termed the red-edge position (REP) has been used as a measure to estimate foliar chlorophyll or nitrogen content. In this study, we assessed the utility of a new technique for extracting the REP, the linear extrapolation method recently proposed by Cho and Skidmore [Remote Sens. Environ. (in press)]. The assessment was base...

Fire suppression has removed an important ecological force previously responsible for shaping many plant communities throughout the world. Upland areas of northcentral Mississippi that have been protected from fire are now closed-canopy forests including species known to be uncommon as bearing/witness trees in upland portions of the landscape (historically off-site species) and sparse ground co...

Carbon and water cycling of forests contribute significantly to the Earth's overall biogeochemical cycling and may be affected by disturbance and climate change. As a larger body of research becomes available about leaf-level, ecosystem and regional scale effects of disturbances on forest ecosystems, a more mechanistic understanding is developing which can improve modeling efforts. Here, we sum...

According to the need of canopy visualization calculation in the digital plant research, we introduced a method, using Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) interpolation and multi-line segment splitting algorithm, to reconstruct the 3D morphological structure of maize leaf with a complexity controllable mesh. Using the data cloud obtained by digitizer, construct the surface of maize leaf by c...

Sun-induced canopy chlorophyll fluorescence in both the red (FR) and far-red (FFR) regions was estimated across a range of temporal scales and a range of species from different plant functional types using high resolution radiance spectra collected on the ground. Field measurements were collected with a state-of-the-art spectrometer setup and standardized methodology. Results showed that differ...

Use and management of jatropha residue is currently an important global issue for attaining sustainability in biofuel production from Jatropha curcas on wastelands. Perhaps, knowledge about the decomposition characteristics and nutrient release pattern from jatropha residues amended soils are lacking. Thus, the objective of present research was to characterize the carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) mi...

Leaf photosynthesis is known to acclimate to the actual irradiance received by the different layers of a canopy. This acclimation is usually described in terms of changes in leaf structure, and in photosynthetic capacity. Photosynthetic capacity is likely to be affected by mesophyll conductance to CO(2) which has seldom been assessed in tree species, and whose plasticity in response to local ir...

Tropical hyperseasonal savannas provide a rare example of a tropical climax community dominated by graminoid species. Species living in such savannas are frequently exposed to excess heat and light, in addition to drought and waterlogging, and must possess traits to avoid or tolerate these stress factors. Here we examine the contrasting heat and light stress adaptations of two dominant savanna ...

in order to evaluate the effect of terminal water deficit stress on leaf traits and their relations to grain yield in different barley genotypes (‘yousof’, ‘fajr30’, ‘nosrat’, ‘pbyt-46’, ‘pbyt-97’ and ‘morocco’), two separated experiments were conducted in stress (water withholding from anthesis towards the end of growing season), and non stress (normal irrigation) conditions based on rcbd with...