Technical Note: Hyperspectral lidar time series of pine canopy physiological parameters

Abstract

We present an empirical application of hyperspectral lidar for monitoring the seasonal and spatial changes in pine chlorophyll content and upscaling the accurate leaf-level chlorophyll measurements into branch and tree level. The results show the capability of the new instrument for monitoring the changes in the shape and physiology of 5 tree canopy: the spectral indices retrieved from the hyperspectral point cloud agree with laboratory measurements of the chlorophyll content. The approach opens new prospects for replacing destructive and labor-intensive manual sampling with remote observations of tree physiology.