Comparison of three indirect field measuring methods for forest canopy leaf area index estimation

The Effective Plant Area Index (PAIe) of forest canopy is an important parameter in the canopy reflectance modeling and validation. PAIe can be transformed to leaf area index (LAI) with clumping index. But it is still very difficult to obtain its ground truth value by in situ measurement. In this study, we measured PAIe of 3 typical wood land sites in China by means of three indirect optical techniques: plant canopy analyzer LAI-2000, TRAC, and Digital Fisheye Camera. The 5 measured stands include Qinghai spruce, peach, poplar, willow and silver chain. In this paper, the forest canopy PAIe measured by those three instruments is compared firstly. Then our new approach is how to use the three measured data to get the better PAIe estimation with less overall error. The method of minimizing overall error is adopted to produce PAIe of the sample plots in our study sites, which has less overall error comparing with the PAIe measured by each individual instrument. This approach is also validated by using computer simulated wide-angle viewing pictures when true LAI/PAIe values are given.