PLANT CANOPY INFORMATION EXTRACTION FROM COMPOSITE SCENE REFLECTANCE OF ROW CROPS

As an aid in the interpretation of remotely sensed data from row crops with incomplete canopies, a model was developed that allowed the calculation of the fractions of sunlit soil, shaded soil, sunlit vegetation, and shaded vegetation for each resolution element in a scan of a remote sensor for a given set of conditions (plant cover, plant height/width ratio, row spacing, row orientation, time of day, day of year, latitude, and size of resolution element).Using measured representative reflectances of the four surfaces, composite reflectances were calculated as a function of view angle.Also, representative temperatures for each surface were used to simulate composite temperatures viewed by an IR scanner.With composite reflectances and temperatures known as a function of view angle, ways were explored to extract plant cover and plant temperature data from the composite data.© 1979 Optical Society of America.