Analysis of the sensitivity of absorbed light and incident light profile to various canopy architecture and stand conditions

Photosynthesis is the process that supplies the basic material for plant growth and ecosystem carbon cycling. Its spatial and temporal variations are determined primarily by the rate and total amount of absorbed photosynthetic photon flux density (Q; hereafter light and Q are used interchangeably; see Table 1 for a summary of abbreviations). The interception of Q is determined by canopy and crown architecture, including the spatial distribution of crowns in stands, the clumping of leaves in shoots, the dimensions of leaves, shoots and crowns, and the angle distribution of leaves (Ross 1981). In turn, the prevailing Q at each location in the canopy affects leaf clumping and angles (Sprugel et al. 1996) as well as leaf photosynthetic characteristics, including mesophyll properties and leaf biochemistry (Sprugel 1989, Niinemets and Kull 1995, Terashima and Hikosaka 1995, Niinemets 1997, Stenberg et al. 2001) and leaf photosynthetic capacity (Oren Research paper