A Novel in Situ FPAR Measurement Method for Low Canopy Vegetation Based on a Digital Camera and Reference Panel

Abstract: The fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) is a key parameter in describing the exchange of fluxes of energy, mass and momentum between the surface and atmosphere. In this study, we present a method to measure FPAR using a digital camera and a reference panel. A digital camera was used to capture color images of low canopy vegetation, which contained a reference panel in one corner of the field of view (FOV). The digital image was classified into photosynthetically active vegetation, ground litter, sunlit soil, shadow soil, and the reference panel. The relative intensity of the incident photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), scene-reflected PAR, exposed background absorbed PAR and the green vegetation-covered ground absorbed PAR were derived from the digital camera image, and then FPAR was calculated. This method was validated on eight plots with four vegetation species using FPAR measured by a SunScan instrument. A linear correlation with a coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.942 and mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.031 was observed between FPAR values derived from the digital camera and measurement using the SunScan instrument. The result suggests that the present method can be used to accurately measure the FPAR of low canopy vegetation.