Light exchanges in discrete directions as an alternative to raytracing and radiosity

Introduction Light modelling at the scale of organs is essential to account accurately for the complex interactions between biophysical processes such as photosynthesis, stomatal conductance and energy balance. Yet, the calculation of radiative exchanges at fine scales is computationally-intensive and it remains a hindrance to a widespread use of FSPMs despite advances in light modelling using either radiosity (Chelle and Andrieu, 1998) or raytracing (Bailey, 2018). This study shows that simplifications based on the discretization of radiative fluxes allow processing radiative exchanges in a natural environment while maintaining good accuracy on the simulation of biophysical processes such as carbon assimilation.