Journal article
Digital cover photography for estimating leaf area index (LAI) in apple trees using a variable light extinction coefficient
C Poblete-Echeverría, S Fuentes, S Ortega-Farias, J Gonzalez-Talice, JAN Yuri
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) | Published : 2015
DOI: 10.3390/s150202860
Open access
Abstract
Leaf area index (LAI) is one of the key biophysical variables required for crop modeling. Direct LAI measurements are time consuming and difficult to obtain for experimental and commercial fruit orchards. Devices used to estimate LAI have shown considerable errors when compared to ground-truth or destructive measurements, requiring tedious site-specific calibrations. The objective of this study was to test the performance of a modified digital cover photography method to estimate LAI in apple trees using conventional digital photography and instantaneous measurements of incident radiation (Io) and transmitted radiation (I) through the canopy. Leaf area of 40 single apple trees were measured ..
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Awarded by Chilean government through CONICYT
Funding Acknowledgements
'The research leading to this report was supported by the Chilean government through the projects CONICYT (No. 79090035) and by Universidad de Talca through the research program "Adaptation of Agriculture to Climate Change (A2C2)". We thank Professor Thomas A. Lehe for English revision.