Estimation of leaf water content and specific leaf weight from reflectance and transmittance measurements

Abstract

Specific absorption coefficients for water and dry matter were estimated using a wide range of variation of fresh leaves.The coefficients were derived from the inversion of the PROSPECT leaf optical property model using reflectance and transmittance spectra measured over the 1 300-2 400-nm domain and the corresponding water content (g.cm -2 ) and specific leaf weight (mass of dry matter per unit leaf.area,g.cm -2 ).Results show that the estimated val- ues of the specific absorption coefficient for dry matter were not reliable in the strong water absorption bands, although there was agreement with previous studies in spectral regions where water contributed moderately to leaf absorption.We thus proposed to use the values derived by Fourty et al (1996) for dry leaves for the specific absorption coefficient