Modeling Reflectance, Fluorescence and Photosynthesis: Development of the Scope Model

Vegetation structure affects the micro-climate and the internal distribution of resources (energy, water and carbon dioxide) for photosynthesis in plants. Combined radiative transfer and plant physiological modelling is a promising way to investigate these effects, and to develop remote sensing techniques for monitoring of vegetation functioning. The Soil-Canopy-Observation of Photosynthesis and Energy fluxes (SCOPE) simulates the radiative transfer of incident light and radiation emitted by soil and plants (thermal and fluorescence), component temperatures, photosynthesis and turbulent heat exchange. Over the last years, SCOPE has been improved: the dynamics of the photochemical reflectance has been included for non-photochemical quenching estimates, the computation of fluorescence scattering and escape probabilities included, and the radiative transfer models validated. Model inversion techniques have been developed for retrieval of leaf, canopy, and atmospheric properties and solar induced fluorescence from radiance measurements at leaf, top-of-canopy and satellite level.