Advancing Leaf Area Index (LAI) Measurement for Climate-Smart Agriculture: Field-Based and UAV-Driven Approaches
A Special Issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395) belonging to the section "Precision and Digital Agriculture".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2026 | Viewed by 202
Editors
Interests: leaf area index; ceptometer; LAI-2200; crop modeling; crop production; climate change
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: image recognition (computer vision technology) and intelligent monitoring of crop growth; crop growth simulation and its system design; UAV phenotypic monitoring and data analysis; the design and application of agricultural Internet of Things systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Leaf area index (LAI) is a critical biophysical parameter that influences photosynthesis, evapotranspiration, and crop productivity. Accurate LAI measurement is essential for understanding plant health, modeling crop growth, and informing climate adaptation strategies. However, current methods vary widely in scale, precision, and accessibility.
This Special Issue aims to bring together cutting-edge research on both in situ and UAV-based LAI measurement techniques. By integrating ground truth data with remote sensing and machine learning approaches, we seek to advance scalable, accurate, and cost-effective solutions for agricultural monitoring under changing climate conditions. The research objectives include the following:
- To develop and validate high-resolution LAI estimation methods using UAV multispectral and hyperspectral imagery;
- To assess the performance of deep learning models versus classical regression techniques for LAI prediction;
- To explore LAI dynamics under abiotic stress (drought, nutrient deficiency) and link them to crop resilience;
- To integrate LAI data into crop growth models for improved yield forecasting and climate adaptation strategies.
We invite researchers to contribute novel and original articles, reviews, and case reports, etc., covering all related topics.
Dr. Klára Pokovai
Prof. Dr. Chengming Sun
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- leaf area index (LAI) measurement
- LAI modeling
- LAI retrieval
- UAV
- radiative transfer models
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