Feasibility of using mobile phone to estimate forest Leaf Area Index: a case study in Yunnan Pine. Issue 2 (1st February 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wang, JingXu; Xiong, QiChen; Lin, QiNan; Huang, HuaGuo
• Is Part Of: Remote sensing letters. Volume 9:Issue 2(2018)
• Page Start: 180
• Page End: 188
• Publication Date: 2018-02-01
• Subjects: Remote sensing -- Periodicals; Remote sensing; Periodicals; 621.3678
• DOI: 10.1080/2150704X.2017.1399470
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2150-704X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Remotely-sensed Leaf Area Index (LAI) is vital to describe the vegetation canopy and assess plant growth condition and healthy status. However, sufficient instant ground LAI samples are pre-required for calibration or validation, which is generally difficult to collect. We proposed a method, LAI-Mobile, to use mobile phones with low-cost fisheye lens to take fisheye photos and to invert LAIs, which may be popularized for ordinary people to generate big volume of LAI sample data. The feasibility of LAI-Mobile was tested by comparing with LAI−2200 and GF-1 satellite data (GF = high resolution) in a pest-invaded Yunnan pine forest area in Yunnan province of China. Results show significant correlation between LAI-2200 and LAI-Mobile data for forest plots with coefficient of determination ( R 2 ) = 0.706 and Root Mean Square Error (RSME) = 0.241, and GF-1 satellite images ( R 2 = 0.659 and RMSE = 0.268). The linear regression shows a good agreement between the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LAI product and the inverted GF-1 LAI, with R 2 = 0.649, RMSE = 0.795. Despite larger uncertainty for single fisheye image than LAI-2200, LAI-mobile can provide fast and convenient method to collect large amount of LAI, which will support remote sensing inversion of LAI at large scale.