Mapping leaf area index in a mixed temperate forest using Fenix airborne hyperspectral data and Gaussian processes regression

•GPR outperforms narrowband VIs, PLSR, and ANN for forest LAI estimation using Fenix airborne hyperspectral data.•LAI map generated by GPR demonstrated a spatial variation of LAI across forest types in BFNP.•Utilizing a selected spectral subset from red-edge and SWIR regions improved the predictive performance of GPR and PLSR.•Higher LAI uncertainties were mainly caused by cloud cover, proximity with deadwood, or low vegetation cover. Machine learning algorithms, in particular, kernel-based machine learning methods such as Gaussian processes regression (GPR) have shown to be promising alternatives to traditional empirical methods for retrieving vegetation parameters from remotely sensed data. However, the performance of GPR in predicting forest biophysical parameters has hardly been examined using full-spectrum airborne hyperspectral data. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of GPR to estimate forest leaf area index (LAI) using airborne hyperspectral data. To achieve this, field measurements of LAI were collected in the Bavarian Forest National Park (BFNP), Germany, concurrent with the acquisition of the Fenix airborne hyperspectral images (400−2500 nm) in July 2017. The performance of GPR was further compared with three commonly used empirical methods (i.e., narrowband vegetation indices (VIs), partial least square regression (PLSR), and artificial neural network (ANN)). The cross-validated coefficient of determination (Rcv2) and root mean square error (RMSEcv) between the retrieved and field-measured LAI were used to examine the accuracy of the respective methods. Our results showed that using the entire spectral data (400−2500 nm), GPR yielded the most accurate LAI estimation (Rcv2 = 0.67, RMSEcv = 0.53 m2 m−2) compared to the best performing narrowband VIs SAVI2 (Rcv2 = 0.54, RMSEcv = 0.63 m2 m−2), PLSR (Rcv2 = 0.74, RMSEcv = 0.73 m2 m−2) and ANN (Rcv2 = 0.68, RMSEcv = 0.54 m2 m−2). Consequently, when a spectral subset obtained from the analysis of VIs was used as model input, the predictive accuracies were generally improved (GPR RMSEcv = 0.52 m2 m−2; ANN RMSEcv = 0.55 m2 m−2; PLSR RMSEcv = 0.69 m2 m−2), indicating that extracting the most useful information from vast hyperspectral bands is crucial for improving model performance. In general, there was an agreement between measured and estimated LAI using different approaches (p > 0.05). The generated LAI map for BFNP using GPR and the spectral subset endorsed the LAI spatia