Understanding Land Surface Processes and Ecosystem Changes with Optical and Laser Remote Sensing

Dear Colleagues,

Progress towards sustainable development requires ever-increasing knowledge on the amount, the conditions, and the response of terrestrial vegetation to climate variability and its role in the coupled cycles of energy, water, and carbon.

Many vegetation properties are related to features of reflectance spectra in the 400–2500 nm region. Detailed observations of spectral reflectance reveal subtle features related to biochemical components of leaves, such as chlorophyll and water. The architecture of vegetation canopies determines complex changes of observed reflectance spectra with view and illumination angle. Quantitative analysis of reflectance spectra requires, therefore, an accurate characterization of the anisotropy of reflected radiance. Concurrent measurements of vegetation canopies with LIDAR systems can provide a very detailed characterization of the architecture of vegetation canopies. Exchange of energy between the biosphere and the atmosphere is an important mechanism determining the response of vegetation to climate variability. This requires measurements of the component temperatures of foliage and soil. The latter is closely related to the angular variation in thermal infrared emittance.

Satellite observations of the terrestrial biosphere cover a period of time sufficiently extended to allow the calculation of a reliable climatology. The latter is particularly relevant for studies of land surface response to climate variability. Both polar orbiting and geostationary satellites have a revisit frequency high enough to allow for some redundancy relative to the processes being observed, so that time series where a fraction of observations are removed and the resulting gaps filled are still very useful to monitor land surface processes.

Contributions are expected on both innovative observation concepts, particularly combining the techniques mentioned above, and time series analysis of satellite observations to observe and understand the response of terrestrial vegetation to climate forcing.

Prof. Dr. Massimo Menenti
Prof. Dr. Li Jia
Guest Editors

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