Response of hyperspectral vegetation indices to vegetation architecture and background soil for estimation of leaf area index

The study aims to investigate whether the estimation of the leaf area index (LAI) from hyperspectral reflectance measurements is significantly affected by soil type and/or plant architecture (e.g., leaf shape and size). Four different plant species with different leaf shapes and sizes were selected for sampling (figure 1). We artificially induced variations in LAI and canopy chlorophyll content as well as variations in background brightness. Narrow band vegetation indices were computed from the canopy spectra using all possible two band wavelength combinations involving 2000 wavelengths between 401 nm and 2400 nm for narrow band SR, NDVI, PVI, TSAVI and SAVI2.