The spaceborne ESA-mission CHRIS (Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) on-board PROBA-1 (Project for On-board Autonomy) delivers multi-directional data sets that contain spectral, directional, spatial and multi-temporal information. CHRIS/PROBA data have been acquired over two well documented test sites in Switzerland (Swiss National Park (SNP) and Vordemwald (VOR) since 2003 and allow...

We examine the utility of Structure from Motion (SfM) point cloud products to generate a digital terrain model (DTM) and estimate canopy heights in a woodland ecosystem in the Texas Hill Country, USA. Very high spatial resolution images were acquired with a Canon PowerShot A800 digital camera mounted on an unmanned aerial system. Image mosaicking and dense point matching were accomplished using...

The forest ecosystem is the largest land vegetation type, which plays the role of unreplacement with its unique value. And in the landscape scale, the research on forest landscape pattern has become the current hot spot, wherein the study of forest canopy structure is very important. They determines the process and the strength of forests energy flow, which influences the adjustments of ecosyst...

The dependence of vegetation re ectance on sun and sensor geometry can potentially provide information on canopy properties, but also may be a source of unmodelled systematic error in single-angle remote sensing measurements. In this study, we investigated the angular variability of re ectance measurements from the NASA Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS), and the resultin...

The net primary productivity (NPP) of a plant community is often positively and linearly related to the amount of photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by its canopy (APAR). The slope of this relationship is governed by the efficiency (ε) of APAR use in biomass production (NPP = APAR×ε). This intuitive model offers a promising means of generating large-scale NPP estimates, but its utilit...

Cities impact both local climate, through urban heat islands and global climate, because they are an area of heavy greenhouse gas release into the atmosphere due to heating, air conditioning and traffic. Including more vegetation into cities is a planning strategy having possible positive impacts for both concerns. Improving vegetation representation into urban models will allow us to address m...

Mapping and monitoring of vast coastal wetlands vulnerable to dynamic coastal erosion, sea-level rise, fire, and marsh succession require remote sensing approaches that capitalize on newly available sensors, advanced classification techniques, and combinations of multi-sensor and multi-date data. This pilot study assesses the feasibility and accuracy potential for mapping specific coastal wetla...

Lidar data provide accurate measurements of forest canopy structure in the vertical plane however current lidar sensors have limited coverage in the horizontal plane. Landsat data provide extensive coverage of generalized forest structural classes in the horizontal plane but are relatively insensitive to variation in forest canopy height. It would therefore be desirable to integrate lidar and L...

Planting shrub seedlings under oil mulches has frequently been used for stabilizing mobile sands in Iran for during the last three decades. Sandy desert of Samad Abad, Sarakhs, northeast Iran, has been fixed by cultivating seedling of Haloxylon aphyllum under the oil mulches. Therefore this study was designed to investigate the effects of the sand fixation project on soil and vegetation propert...

A series of diurnal airborne campaigns were conducted over an orchard field to assess the canopy Photochemical Reflectance Index (PRI) as an indicator of water stress. Airborne campaigns over two years were conducted with the Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner (AHS) over an orchard field to investigate changes in PRI, in the Transformed Chlorophyll Absorption in Reflectance Index (TCARI) normalized...