Exploring various spectral regions for estimating chlorophyll from ASD leaf reflectance using prospect radiative transfer model

The performance of PROSPECT-5 radiative transfer model for predicting leaf chlorophyll from reflectance measurements made with the Analytical Spectral Device (ASD) spectrometer was investigated using numerical inversion techniques. The reflectance data of various spectral regions in the visible to shortwave infrared (SWIR) were assessed i.e. the full range (400-2500 nm), VNIR (400-1060 nm), visible (400-700 nm), red (600-700 nm), red-red edge (600-760 nm) and red-edge (670-760 nm). Among the spectral regions, the red-edge region yielded the lowest root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP =10.3 μg/cm²) for a variety of plants including crops and wild plants (n = 463). It is therefore recommended that inversion of radiative transfer models to retrieve leaf chlorophyll content be limited to the red-edge region.