Remote sensing the biochemical composition of a slash pine canopy

Airborne imaging spectrometers can record spatially-explicit information on the absorption features associated with foliar biochemicals in a forest canopy [1]-[8]. The spectra of a single species pine canopy were recorded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) [9]. Up to three wavebands were correlated to the concentration of chlorophyll, nitrogen, lignin, and cellulose (R(2) = 0.96, 0.94, 0.93, and 0.61, respectively) and the content of these four biochemicals (R(2) = 0.98, 0.91, 0.88, and 0.92, respectively). The AVIRIS data were used, for the first time, to map the content of these biochemicals within the forest canopy and the accuracy was between 3-7% of the mean.