Comparing Forest Species Emissivity Using Airborne Thermal Infrared Hyperspectral data in a Mixed Temperate Forest

The need to identify and remotely speciate different vegetation classes in mixed forest environments continues to be an important area for ecosystem conservation and management purposes. Such applications generally rely on the biochemical and biophysical properties found in the VNIR (0.3–1.0 μm) and SWIR (1.0–2.5 μm) regions. Nevertheless, foliar spectral behaviour in the TIR (8–14 μm) domain has
significant interspecies variability that has been shown to correlate with the spectral features of key plant constituents. Different plant species have been successfully discriminated in the laboratory using leaf emissivity spectra. However, given the complexity of emissivity at the canopy level, species discrimination using canopy emissivity spectra obtained from airborne TIR remains unexplored. This study aims to compare the differences in the canopy emissivity spectra obtained from the airborne TIR hyperspectral data among and between various vegetation covers in a mixed temperate forest.