Estimation of foliar chlorophyll and nitrogen content in an ombrotrophic bog from hyperspectral data: Scaling from leaf to image

The relationship between spectral reflectance and foliar chlorophyll (Chl) and nitrogen (N) was examined for 19 species over a six-month growing period at Mer Bleue, an ombrotrophic bog located near Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The goal of this study was to model total Chl and N concentration at the landscape-scale from remotely sensed data utilizing a model insensitive to plant functional type (PFT), species and season. To date the relationship between spectral reflectance and foliar properties is poorly understood in peatlands owing to the scarcity of studies examining the spectral variability between mosses and vascular plants. A model that comprised a continuous wavelet transform coupled with a neural network was constructed to predict Chl and N content from selected wavelet features (coefficients) at both leaf and airborne image scales. The model was compared to thirteen common spectral indices used to determine vegetation properties in forest environments. The heterogeneity of the vascular plant/moss cover over small spatial scales (