Evaluation of Sentinel-2 Red-Edge Bands for Empirical Estimation of Green LAI and Chlorophyll Content.docVIP

Sensors 2011, 11, 7063-7081; doi:10.3390/s110707063 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 /journal/sensors Article Evaluation of Sentinel-2 Red-Edge Bands for Empirical Estimation of Green LAI and Chlorophyll Content Jesús Delegido *, Jochem Verrelst, Luis Alonso and José Moreno Department of Earth Physics and Thermodynamics, Image Processing Laboratory, Universidad de Valencia, P.O. Box 22085, Paterna E-46071,Valencia, Spain; E-Mails: jochem.verrelst@uv.es (J.V.); luis.alonso@uv.es (L.A.); jose.moreno@uv.es (J.M.) * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: delegido@uv.es; Tel.: +34-963-544-068; Fax: +34-963-543-261. Received: 15 May 2011; in revised form: 1 July 2011 / Accepted: 2 July 2011/ Published: 8 July 2011 Abstract: ESA’s upcoming satellite Sentinel-2 will provide Earth images of high spatial, spectral and temporal resolution and aims to ensure continuity for Landsat and SPOT observations. In comparison to the latter sensors, Sentinel-2 incorporates three new spectral bands in the red-edge region, which are centered at 705, 740 and 783 nm. This study addresses the importance of these new bands for the retrieval and monitoring of two important biophysical parameters: green leaf area index (LAI) and chlorophyll content (Ch). With data from several ESA field campaigns over agricultural sites (SPARC, AgriSAR, CEFLES2) we have evaluated the efficacy of two empirical methods that specifically make use of the new Sentinel-2 bands. First, it was shown that LAI can be derived from a generic normalized difference index (NDI) using hyperspectral data, with 674 nm with 712 nm as best performing bands. These bands are positioned closely to the Sentinel-2 B4 (665 nm) and the new red-edge B5 (705 nm) band. The method has been applied to simulated Sentinel-2 data. The resulting green LAI map was validated against field data of various crop types, thereby spanning a LAI between 0 and 6,