Vegetation spectroscopy has become an increasingly important tool in plant ecophysiology and ecology. This is because differences in the reflectance, absorptance and transmittance of light at different wavelengths by plant parts are tightly coupled to their chemical composition, cell structure and physiological properties. However, fundamental challenges still remain in the interpretation of the dominant sources of variability in vegetation spectroscopy across a wide range of scales (i.e., from leaves to individual tree crowns tolandscapes). Here, aiming to resolve such scaling issues, we used field measurements collec
Results/Conclusions
Our preliminary results show that: (1) at the leaf scale, there are remarkable convergent relationships between leaf spectroscopy and important plant functional traits (e.g. leaf-mass-per-area, Vcmax, and leaf water content) across tropical tree species and forest sites; (2) at the individual tree crown scale, plant functional traits, leaf age composition and crown structure jointly determine canopy spectroscopy; and (3) over the landscapes, leaf age demography and canopy surface relative abundance of deciduous trees over evergreen trees dominate satellite observations of ecosystem greenness. Our work thus improves biophysical interpretation of vegetation spectroscopy in the tropics, and allows for an improved usage of vegetation spectroscopy to aid related ecology studies.