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Estimation of FAPAR over croplands using MISR data and the earth observation land data assimilation system (EO-LDAS)

Chernetskiy, M; Gómez-Dans, J; Gobron, N; Morgan, O; Lewis, P; Truckenbrodt, S; Schmullius, C; (2017) Estimation of FAPAR over croplands using MISR data and the earth observation land data assimilation system (EO-LDAS). Remote Sensing , 9 (7) , Article 656. 10.3390/rs9070656. Green open access

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Abstract

The Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically-Active Radiation (FAPAR) is an important parameter in climate and carbon cycle studies. In this paper, we use the Earth Observation Land Data Assimilation System (EO-LDAS) framework to retrieve FAPAR from observations of directional surface reflectance measurements from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer(MISR) instrument. The procedure works by interpreting the reflectance data via the semi-discrete Radiative Transfer (RT) model, supported by a prior parameter distribution and a dynamic regularisation model and resulting in an inference of land surface parameters, such as effective Leaf Area Index (LAI), leaf chlorophyll concentration and fraction of senescent leaves, with full uncertainty quantification. The method is demonstrated over three agricultural FLUXNET sites, and the EO-LDAS results are compared with eight years of in situ measurements of FAPAR and LAI, resulting in a total of 24 site years. We additionally compare three other widely-used EO FAPAR products, namely the MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) Full Resolution, the MISR High Resolution (HR) Joint Research Centre Two-stream Inversion Package (JRC-TIP) and MODIS MCD15 FAPAR products. The EO-LDAS MISR FAPAR retrievals show a high correlation with the ground measurements (r 2 > 0.8), as well as the lowest average RMSE (0.14), in line with the MODIS product. As the EO-LDAS solution is effectively interpolated, if only measurements that are coincident with MISR observations are considered, the correlation increases (r 2 > 0.85); the RMSE is lower by 4-5%; and the bias is 2% and 7%. The EO-LDAS MISR LAI estimates show a strong correlation with ground-based LAI (average r 2 = 0.76), but an underestimate of LAI for optically-thick canopies due to saturation (average RMSE = 2.23). These results suggest that the EO-LDAS approach is successful in retrieving both FAPAR and other land surface parameters. A large part of this success is based on the use of a dynamic regularisation model that counteracts the poor temporal sampling from the MISR instrument.

Type: Article
Title: Estimation of FAPAR over croplands using MISR data and the earth observation land data assimilation system (EO-LDAS)
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3390/rs9070656
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.3390/rs9070656
Language: English
Additional information: c 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Biophysical parameters; inverse problems; FAPAR; leaf area index; radiative transfer; vegetation
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Space and Climate Physics
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1561499
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