Estimation of Leaf Area Index and Above-Ground Biomass of Winter Wheat Based on Optimal Spectral Index

Abstract

Leaf area index (LAI) and above-ground biomass are both vital indicators for evaluating crop growth and development, while rapid and non-destructive estimation of crop LAI and above-ground biomass is of considerable significance for crop field management. Owing to the advantages of repeatable and high-throughput observations, spectral technology provides a feasible method for obtaining LAI and above-ground biomass of crops. In the present study, the spectral, LAI and above-ground biomass data of winter wheat were collected, and 7 species (14 in total) were calculated based on the original and first-order differential spectrum correlation spectral indices with LAI. Then, the correlation matrix method was used for correlation with LAI. The optimal wavelength combination was extracted, and the results were calculated as the optimal spectral index related to LAI. The calculation process of the optimal spectral index related to above-ground biomass was the same as that aforementioned. Finally, the optimal spectral index was divided into three groups of model input variables, winter wheat LAI and above-ground biomass estimation models were constructed using support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF) and a back propagation neural network (BPNN), and the models were verified. The results show that the correlation coefficient between the highest of the optimal spectral indices, the LAI, and the above-ground biomass of winter wheat exceeded 0.6, and the correlation was good. The methods for establishing the optimal estimation models for LAI and above-ground biomass of winter wheat are all modeling methods in which the input variables are the combination of the first-order differential spectral index (combination 2) and RF. The R2 of the LAI estimation model validation set was 0.830, the RMSE was 0.276, and the MRE was 6.920; the R2 of the above-ground biomass estimation model validation set was 0.682, RMSE was 235.016, MRE was 4.336, and the accuracies of both models were high. The present research results can provide a theoretical basis for crop monitoring based on spectral technology and provide an application reference for the rapid estimation of crop growth parameters.

Research on potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) nitrogen nutrition diagnosis based on hyperspectral data

“…Grid search was then applied to optimize the SVM parameters, penalty coefficient C, and γ. Based on the principle of minimizing cross-validation error, the values of C and γ were determined as 30 and 0.05, respectively (Tang et al, 2022).…”

“…The Savitzky–Golay convolution smoothing approach was used to minimize background noise, baseline drift, stray light, and extraneous information on the hyperspectral reflectance curves (Tang et al., 2022). A quadratic polynomial with a smoothing point of 9 was used for function fitting and noise reduction through filtering.…”

“…In SVM modeling, the kernel function type was set as “poly.” Grid search was then applied to optimize the SVM parameters, penalty coefficient C , and γ . Based on the principle of minimizing cross‐validation error, the values of C and γ were determined as 30 and 0.05, respectively (Tang et al., 2022). For RF model construction, after parameter optimization and multiple training iterations, the number of decision trees in both the leaf area index (LAI) and DM models was set to 100 (H. Z. Shi et al., 2023).…”

“…Green red vegetation index (GRVI) 𝑅 800 ∕𝑅 550 M. L. curves (Tang et al, 2022). A quadratic polynomial with a smoothing point of 9 was used for function fitting and noise reduction through filtering.…”

“…In this study, three types of vegetation spectral parameters were constructed to estimate the potato NNI: (1) the empirical vegetation index with good correlation between previous studies and crop parameters (calculated using a fixed two-band method, exhibits a strong correlation with both previous studies and various crop parameters) (Gong et al, 2023); (2) the optimum vegetation index (displays the highest correlation with the potato NNI, was meticulously identified. Specifically, we determined the optimal combination index within the wavelength range of 350-1830 nm, employing a band-by-band calculation method) (Tang et al, 2022); and (3) "trilateral" spectral parameters (involving the blue, yellow, and red edge areas were considered. These parameters, often associated with the red edge, blue edge, and green edge, provide valuable insights into the spectral characteristics of the studied vegetation) (Yang et al, 2023).…”