Modelling light use efficiency using vegetation index and land surface temperature from MODIS in Harvard Forest

Abstract

Light use efficiency (LUE) is of great importance for carbon cycle and climate change research. This study presents a new LUE model incorporation of vegetation indices (VIs) and land surface temperature (LST) derived from the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) in Harvard Forest. Three indices, including the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the two-band enhanced vegetation index (EVI2) and the soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), were selected as indicators of forest canopy greenness. A single VI provided moderate estimates of LUE with coefficients of determination (R 2) 0.6219, 0.7094 and 0.7502 for NDVI, EVI2 and SAVI, respectively. Our results demonstrated that canopy LUE was related both to the canopy photosynthesis efficiency and air temperature (R 2 = 0.5634). Therefore, the MODIS LST product was incorporated as a surrogate for monitoring of environmental stresses as the observed relationship between LST and both air temperature (R 2 = 0.8828) and vapour pressure deficit (VPD) (R 2 = 0.6887). The new model in terms of (VI) × (Scaled (LST)) provided improved estimates of LUE estimation with R 2 of 0.7349, 0.7561 and 0.7879 for NDVI, EVI2 and SAVI, respectively. The results will be useful for the development of future LUE models based entirely on remote-sensing observations.