Current Earth system models represent Arctic plant traits
with a mean value that does not vary with time or space. We’re working towards approaches that will
provide rich descriptions of plant traits for next generation models that will
enable the representation of spatial and temporal variation in several key model
parameters. To achieve this goal we are building relationships between plant
functional and structural traits and spectral signatures of plant leaves and
canopies so that we can leverage near surface, airborne and ultimately space
borne remotely sensed data to retrieve these plant traits.
We’ve spent the last week working towards that goal. Shawn and Wil have been scanning plant
canopies and Kim and I and been following them around measuring physiological
properties before handing our leaves back to Shawn and Wil for measurement of
leaf level spectra. We’re hoping to
demonstrate that leaf level relationships between spectra and plant traits
translate to canopy level measurements that can be used to retrieve
physiological properties across time and space and in the near term hope to
apply these relationships to observations from the NGEE-Arctic tram.
