Exploring the Potential of SCOPE Model for Detection of Leaf Area Index and Sun-Induced Fluorescence of Peatland Canopy

The study of peatland is challenging due to the water saturation and evergreen mixed vegetation that ranges from simple forms of plants such as mosses to higher forms of plants such as cranberries, grasses, etc. The changing water level through the growing season makes the peatland vegetation very dynamic. In this work, we have used ground-level remote-sensing signals to understand the dynamic nature of peatland vegetation. We have also estimated the leaf area index (LAI) and Sun-Induced fluorescence (SIF) through the Soil Canopy Observation of Photosynthesis and Energy fluxes (SCOPE) model. The estimated LAI and SIF were compared with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Near-Infrared Reflectance of vegetation (NIRv), and measured SIF. The modeled LAI was observed to be significantly correlated with NDVI, EVI, and NIRv, whereas a good correlation was observed between measured and modeled SIF. Along with showing the dynamic behavior of peatland vegetation, the study indicates that SCOPE in its inverted form can be used to estimate reflectance-based LAI for peatland, which can be more reliable to present biomass and productivity of peatland ecosystem in comparison to transmittance-based LAI measurement for such ecosystem. The good correlation between measured and modeled SIF at 760 nm indicates that a reliable SIF value can be estimated through the SCOPE model for a complex ecosystem such as peatland, which can be very helpful in the absence of high-resolution hyperspectral data (usually used for SIF measurements).