Thermal Signatures of Canopy Structures
Suggested elective course:
- Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing: From Theory to applications
Image:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leaf_temperature-_infrared_image_of_tomato_leaves.jpg
Monitoring the structure of Vegetation is one of the big applications in Remote sensing. Most vegetation monitoring is based on visible and near infrared spectral information. However, some studies have shown that also Thermal Infrared (> 2 µm) contain unique information about plant species (Ullah et al 2012), leaf traits (Buitrago Acevedo et al. 2018) and canopies (Neinavaz et al. 2016). But the exact relation between canopy structure and thermal signal is yet unclear, and there are questions about, for example, canopy openness, leaf angle distribution and leaf size. In this topic, these relations will be systematicall assessed in the new FieldLab on the campus.
Plants will be grown at the new Field Lab at the UT campus. Here plants will be manipulated to present a gradient of different canopy dimensions (leaf angle distributions, gap fractions, Specific leaf area etc) while maintaining the other dimensions constant. Then measurements of high spectral resolution with the MIDAC field instrument will made, to assess the spectral signature of these plants under varying weather conditions.
Thorough statistical analysis will be applied ( e.g. PLSR, multivariate analysis, and machine learning) to assess if there are robust and significant differences in thermal radiation signals and canopy structural properties.
- Ullah, S., Groen, T. A., Schlerf, M., Skidmore, A. K., Nieuwenhuis, W., & Vaiphasa, C. (2012). Using a genetic algorithm as an optimal band selector in the mid and thermal infrared (2,5-14um) to discriminate vegetation species. Sensors (US), 12(7), 8755-8769. https://doi.org/10.3390/s120708755
- Neinavaz, E., Darvishzadeh, R., Skidmore, A. K., & Groen, T. A. (2016). Measuring the response of canopy emissivity spectra to leaf area index variation using thermal hyperspectral data. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (JAG), 53, 40-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2016.08.002
- Buitrago Acevedo, M. F., Skidmore, A., Groen, T. A., & Hecker, C. A. (2018). Connecting infrared spectra with plant traits to identify species. ISPRS journal of photogrammetry and remote sensing, 139, 183-200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2018.03.013