Airborne measurement of hot spot reflectance signatures

The so-called hot spot is a fine directional signature of the surface reflectance observed for phase angles close to zero. In this paper, we analyze and discuss several such signatures acquired from the airborne POLDER and HyMap instruments during the DAISEX'99 campaign over agricultural crops. The observed signatures are very similar to those acquired from space at a resolution of several tens of kilometers [J. Geophys. Res. 107 (2002)], which provides further evidence that the hot spot is a scale-free feature. The hot spots can be fitted by a two-parameter function (amplitude and width) of the phase angle derived from canopy radiative transfer modeling. The model predicts that the amplitude is directly related to the leaf reflectance, while the width is a function of the canopy structure. The retrieved leaf reflectance values over a wide spectral range are in very good agreement with noncoincident laboratory measurement. The retrieved half widths are on the order of 1degrees with no significant variability between the analyzed targets. There is an apparent spectral variability in the half width, a feature in contradiction with the modeling, although the variations are not larger than the uncertainties. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.