Leaf equivalent water Thickness assessment using reflectance at optimum wavelengths

Leaf water content is an important parameter in environmental monitoring. The present study investigated the relation between leaf Equivalent Water Thickness (EWT) as a parameter to estimate the leaf water content and the reflectance in 400-2,500 nm spectral range. The data used were the well-known Leaf Optical Properties Experiment 93 (LOPEX93) field collected data. Four hundred leaf samples were used, 320 of which for modelling and the remaining 80 for testing the model. Four different approaches were investigated in this study: 1) linear regression between reflectance in individual wavelength and EWT; 2) the difference of reflectance in two wavelengths and EWT; 3) ratio of reflectance in two wavelengths and EWT; and finally 4) the normalized difference of reflectance in two different wavelengths and EWT. The results showed that the band combinations such as ratio and normalized difference had higher regressions with leaf water content. In addition, the findings of this study showed that some parts of the near infrared (NIR) and short wave infrared (SWIR) of the spectrum provided higher accuracies in EWT assessment, and correlations of more than 90% were achieved. Finally, this investigation showed that a wide range of wavelengths could be used for EWT assessment task. Despite the general belief in using water absorption bands for leaf water content assessment, this study shows that water absorption bands are not necessarily productive as other wavelengths have the potential to generate better results