A Method to Upscale the Leaf Area Index (LAI) Using GF-1 Data with the Assistance of MODIS Products in the Poyang Lake Watershed

A leaf area index is a key parameter reflecting the growth changes of vegetation and one of the most important canopy structural parameters for performing quantitative analyses of many ecological and climate models. Although using high-resolution satellite data and the radiative transfer model (RTM) can be used to generate high resolution LAI products, the RTM method has some problems because its temporal resolution is low, the input parameters are more appropriate for a physics model, and some parameters are difficult to obtain. Problems that urgently need to be solved include improving the temporal-spatial resolution for LAI products and localizing LAI products. To explore an applicable method for the high-resolution LAI products in a small basin and to improve the inversion accuracy, we propose an approach for GF-1 WFV LAI retrieval using MOD15A2 data and the measured LAI of the Poyang Lake watershed. Empirical models were used to retrieve high resolution LAI values, and the results show that these models are well designed for analyzing time-series satellite data. Good correlations were obtained between the NDVI of the GF-1 WFV data, the retrieved LAI values and the MODIS LAI data from samples acquired in both summer and winter. The exponential NDVI model obtained the best LAI value estimation results from the GF-1 WFV data (R2 = 0.697, RMSE = 1.100); the best synthetic validation of the RMSE is 0.883, close to the optimum model. Therefore, the retrieval results more fully reflect the growth process of the different features. This study proposed an upscale method for developing a high spatial resolution GF-1 satellite standard LAI products retrieval model using MODIS data. The proposed method will be helpful for efficiently improving the temporal-spatial resolution of LAI products to benefit the extraction of vegetation parameter information and dynamic land use monitoring.