Research Progress and Prospect of Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) in Remote Sensing

Authors: Zhai L*

DOI: 10.23880/oajar-16000291

Volume 7, Issue 2

Abstract

To date, assorted optical-based remote sensing instruments and techniques have been developed vigorously to monitor ecosystem physiological functions and matterenergy exchange status [1-4]. Although numerous studies have investigated remotely sensed reflectance-based vegetation indices (VIs) which characterize the greenness of terrestrial vegetation, ave been utilized to estimate vegetation physiological parameters at larger scales, there is still intrinsic limitation that VIs cannot reflect the live photosynthetic rate. As the most crucial physiological activity of plant, photosynthesis comprises a series of complex and intricate electrochemical reactions in chloroplasts [5]. Firstly, light energy was consumed by leaf chloroplasts in three pathways: photochemical reaction, heat dissipation and fluorescence emission which occur simultaneously and compete with each other [6-8]. And then, chlorophyll a molecules enter an excited state after absorbing photons and release excess energy through vibrational relaxation, after that fluorescence emerged during this process within 650-800 nm and characterized by two peaks (the first peak at 690 nm and the second peak at 760 nm) [7,9,10]. As a by-product of photosynthesis, fluorescence is inextricably linked to photosynthesis which is a sensitive, non-invasive and relatively simple method to observe vegetation photosynthetic status. Therefore, SIF has become a promising tool to detect variable photosynthetic physiological patterns, which may be due to changes of vegetation structure and functional activities, or upscale from canopy to ecosystem and then to global scale [11-14].

Keywords: Remote Sensing; Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence; Photosynthesis

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