“…A rhizo canopy arises from the dynamic interactions among an individual plant, its neighbors, and the pedosphere, like a forest canopy expands dynamically in time and space. Even leaf area development and canopy closure of row crops, like soybean, is a complex process with incompletely understood effects of environment, neighbors, and management [ 64 , 65 ]. Analogous attempts to characterize dynamic heterogeneity of tree branch structure [ 66 ], a forest canopy [ 67 , 68 ], a city skyline [ 69 ], or traces of even historic human land use [ 70 ], have traditionally relied on transects, but technologies such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR) have dramatically increased coverage, resolution, and changed the way these processes are conceptualized ([ 71 ]; Anderson et al, 2006).…”