3‐D maps of tree canopy geometries at leaf scale

Abstract

The geometrical structure of plant canopies has many implications for plant functioning, microclimatic conditions, and plant-pathogen/herbivore interactions. Plant geometry can be described at several scales. At the finest scale, canopy structure includes the shape, size, location, and orientation of each organ in the canopy. This data set reports the three-dimensional (3-D) geometry of a set of fruit and rubber trees at the leaf scale. A 3-D magnetic digitizer was used to measure the spatial coordinates and the orientation angles of each leaf, namely, the midrib azimuth and inclination angles, and the rolling angle of leaf lamina around the midrib. In addition, for most trees, branching or flush order is given as well as the ranking of leaves along branches and the leaf identity of leaflets in compound-leaved trees. Leaf length was also measured for most trees. Leaf width was measured or estimated based on allometric relationships. Leaf area was derived from allometric relationships with leaf length and width. The data set includes the 3-D geometry of six trees: one apple, two mangos, two rubbers, and one walnut. Plant height ranged from 1.6 m for mango trees to 5.3 m for the large rubber tree. The number of leaves ranged from 895 for the small rubber tree to 26,283 for the apple tree. Total leaf area ranged from 3.6 m2 for the small rubber tree to 36.4 m2 for the apple tree. Most of the data were used to show how canopy geometry determines light interception and subsequently plant primary production and fruit yield. The data set was also used to test the quality of innovative methods for canopy structure description at tree scale. The apple tree was used to study the thermal environment of a leaf miner insect, to show how canopy geometry leads to a strongly heterogeneous risk of mortality, in particular under heat-wave conditions. Overall, our data set provides explicit plant architectures suitable for spatial modeling of plant physiological ecology and plant-herbivore interactions, allowing us to determine the mechanisms through which climate impacts biological and ecological processes involved in these functions

Structure is more important than physiology for estimating intracanopy distributions of leaf temperatures

“…First, we need more data on plant architectures (Barthélémy & Caraglio, ) across latitudes, altitudes, and biomes. Currently, detailed architectural traits are available primarily from crops and orchards (Godin & Sinoquet, ; Sinoquet et al., ) but not from single species or mixed‐species stands in the wild (see Ref. (Farque, Sinoquet, & Colin, ) for an exception).…”

“…Because the model has been applied most extensively to apple trees, we used as the base set of parameters those that have been measured for apples in France. Briefly, a set of apple trees were digitized leaf by leaf, reporting the 3D coordinates of each individual leaf and its three Euler angles (Figure ; Pincebourde et al., ; Sinoquet et al., ). From these digitized trees, two different tree plots were constructed: a first one consisting of a single tree (Figure a) and a second one composed of 20 apple trees in a forest stand (Figure b) in which the model's bounding box cut off the outermost sections.…”

“…We developed our analysis using the well‐described architecture and physiology of apple trees, Malus domestica (Saudreau et al., ). Apple is probably the plant species with the most detailed dataset on its architecture (Saudreau et al., ; Sinoquet et al., ), although quite complex methodologies have been developed to capture the architecture of forest trees (e.g., Lintunen, Sievänen, Kaitaniemi, & Perttunen, ). We also used a common voxel size (20 cm), which was shown to predict well the leaf temperatures at local and whole canopy scales.…”

Simulation of multi-platform LiDAR for assessing total leaf area in tree crowns

“…and one apple tree (Malus communis Desf.) were obtained from Sinoquet et al (2009). All samples were isolated trees with no crown contact.…”

Canopy distribution and microclimate preferences of sterile and wild Queensland fruit flies

“…For example, insects often rely on shelter-seeking behaviors to avoid prolonged exposure to harmful conditions 4 – 6 . For insects inhabiting plant foliage, arboreal canopies are complex three-dimensional structures that affect physical environmental variables such as shading from solar radiation and leaf temperature while also being modified by biological processes 7 , 8 . Herbivorous insects may affect leaf microclimates through their feeding 9 , 10 and shape canopy structures 11 to improve their surrounding conditions.…”