An Extended 3-D Radiosity–Graphics Combined Model for Studying Thermal-Emission Directionality of Crop Canopy

Radiosity-graphics combined model (RGM) has been proposed to calculate the radiation regime and bidirectional reflectance distribution function of complex 3D scene, which is limited in visible and near-infrared wavelength (0.3-3 mum) region. In this paper, RGM is extended to thermal region (named as TRGM) based on thermal-radiosity theory and thermal-emission directionality of vegetation canopy. The TRGM has been implemented on Microsoft Windows platform, and a parameterization scheme for crop canopies is introduced in this paper. It is then evaluated by comparing with two row-crop directional thermal emission models and one thermal radiative-transfer model. Field experiment data has been used to validate the TRGM for row structural wheat and maize canopies. The root mean square error of directional brightness temperature (DBT) is smaller than 1.0degC for the wheat canopy and 0.5degC for the maize canopy while the canopy DBTs vary more than 4degC. Model sensitivity analyses have also been conducted to illustrate influences of component temperature distribution, component emissivity, incident atmospheric radiation, and canopy structure on the crop canopy DBT.