Sergio Sánchez-Ruiz

Multitemporal Monitoring of Plant Area Index in the Valencia Rice District with PocketLAI

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key biophysical parameter used to determine foliage cover and crop growth in environmental studies in order to assess crop yield. Frequently, plant canopy analyzers (LAI-2000) and digital cameras for hemispherical photography (DHP) are used for indirect effective plant area index (PAIeff) estimates. Nevertheless, these instruments are expensive and have the disadvantages of low portability and maintenance. Recently, a smartphone app called PocketLAI was presented and tested for acquiring PAIeff measurements. It was used during an entire rice season for indirect PAIeff estimations and for deriving reference high-resolution PAIeff maps. Ground PAIeff values acquired with PocketLAI, LAI-2000, and DHP were well correlated (R2 = 0.95, RMSE = 0.21 m2/m2 for Licor-2000, and R2 = 0.94, RMSE = 0.6 m2/m2 for DHP). Complementary data such as phenology and leaf chlorophyll content were acquired to complement seasonal rice plant information provided by PAIeff. High-resolution PAIeff maps, which can be used for the validation of remote sensing products, have been derived using a global transfer function (TF) made of several measuring dates and their associated satellite radiances.

Mapping Leaf Area Index With a Smartphone and Gaussian Processes

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key biophysical parameter used to determine foliage cover and crop growth in environmental studies. Smartphones are nowadays ubiquitous sensor devices with high computational power, moderate cost, and high-quality sensors. A smartphone app, which is called PocketLAI, was recently presented and tested for acquiring ground LAI estimates. In this letter, we explore the use of state-of-the-art nonlinear Gaussian process regression (GPR) to derive spatially explicit LAI estimates over rice using ground data from PocketLAI and Landsat 8 imagery. GPR has gained popularity in recent years because of its solid Bayesian foundations that offer not only high accuracy but also confidence intervals for the retrievals. We show the first LAI maps obtained with ground data from a smartphone combined with advanced machine learning. This letter compares LAI predictions and confidence intervals of the retrievals obtained with PocketLAI with those obtained with classical instruments, such as digital hemispheric photography (DHP) and LI-COR LAI-2000. This letter shows that all three instruments obtained comparable results, but PocketLAI is far cheaper. The proposed methodology hence opens a wide range of possible applications at moderate cost.

Quantifying water stress effect on daily light use efficiency in Mediterranean ecosystems using satellite data

ABSTRACT The capacity of six water stress factors (ε′i) to track daily light use efficiency (ε) of water-limited ecosystems was evaluated. These factors are computed with remote sensing operational products and a limited amount of ground data: ε′1 uses ground precipitation and air temperature, and satellite incoming global solar radiation; ε′2 uses ground air temperature, and satellite actual evapotranspiration and incoming global solar radiation; ε′3 uses satellite actual and potential evapotranspiration; ε′4 uses satellite soil moisture; ε′5 uses satellite-derived photochemical reflectance index; and ε′6 uses ground vapor pressure deficit. These factors were implemented in a production efficiency model based on Monteith’s approach in order to assess their performance for modeling gross primary production (GPP). Estimated GPP was compared to reference GPP from eddy covariance (EC) measurements (GPPEC) in three sites placed in the Iberian Peninsula (two open shrublands and one savanna). ε′i were correlated to ε, which was calculated by dividing GPPEC by ground measured photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and satellite-derived fraction of absorbed PAR. Best results were achieved by ε′1, ε′2, ε′3 and ε′4 explaining around 40% and 50% of ε variance in open shurblands and savanna, respectively. In terms of GPP, R2 ≈ 0.70 were obtained in these cases.

Development of an earth observation processing chain for crop bio-physical parameters at local scale

This paper proposes a full Earth observation processing chaing for biophysical parameter estimation at local scales. In particular, we focus on the Leaf Area Index (LAI) as an essential climate variable required for the monitoring and modeling of land surfaces at local scale. The main goal of this study is tied to the use of optical satellite images to retrieve Earth Observation (EO) biophysical parameters able to describe the spatio-temporal changes in agro-ecosystems at local scale. The objective of this work is two-fold: (i) to set up and update the EO products processing chain at high resolution (local) scale; and (ii) derive multitemporal LAI maps at 30 m resolution to be fed into a crop model. The processing chain includes the combination of surface reflectance products from Landat 7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 OLI. The results of the processing chain used and the retrieval approach are encouraging for crop monitoring at local scale.

Annual Gross Primary Production from Vegetation Indices: A Theoretically Sound Approach

A linear relationship between the annual gross primary production (GPP) and a PAR-weighted vegetation index is theoretically derived from the Monteith equation. A semi-empirical model is then proposed to estimate the annual GPP from commonly available vegetation indices images and a representative PAR, which does not require actual meteorological data. A cross validation procedure is used to calibrate and validate the model predictions against reference data. As the calibration/validation process depends on the reference GPP product, the higher the quality of the reference GPP, the better the performance of the semi-empirical model. The annual GPP has been estimated at 1-km scale from MODIS NDVI and EVI images for eight years. Two reference data sets have been used: an optimized GPP product for the study area previously obtained and the MOD17A3 product. Different statistics show a good agreement between the estimates and the reference GPP data, with correlation coefficient around 0.9 and relative RMSE around 20%. The annual GPP is overestimated in semiarid areas and slightly underestimated in dense forest areas. With the above limitations, the model provides an excellent compromise between simplicity and accuracy for the calculation of long time series of annual GPP.

Intercomparison of instruments for measuring leaf area index over rice

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key biophysical parameter used to determine foliage cover and crop growth in environmental studies in order to assess crop yield. LAI estimates can be classified as direct or indirect methods. Direct methods are destructive, time consuming, and difficult to apply over large fields. Indirect methods are non-destructive and cost-effective due to its portability, accuracy and repeatability. In this study, we compare indirect LAI estimates acquired from two classical instruments such as LAI-2000 and digital cameras for hemispherical photography, with LAI estimates acquired with a smart app (PocketLAI) installed on a mobile smartphone. In this work it is shown that LAI estimates obtained with the classical instruments and with a smartphone are well correlated. Consequently, results presented in this work allow considering PocketLAI as a powerful alternative to the classical instruments for LAI monitoring during field campaigns.