A general method of spatial scaling for leaf area index

Abstract

Leaf area index, which is the most basic biophysical parameter in the description of vegetation canopy structure, has become an important input parameter in land surface process. Along with the intensive study of LAI retrieval in remote sensing, the scale effect problem related to LAI has attracted more and more attention and has become a focus in quantitative study of remote sensing. Based on the mechanism analysis of scaling effects, the scale effect of LAI is discussed. Then, the relevant scaling model is proposed under the hypothesis of a normal distribution of surface observations. The result shows that the relative error for LAI retrieval is less than 1%. So, it validates the reliability of this model in one aspect.