Reflection of layered bean leaves over different soil backgrounds: measured and simulated spectra

Abstract A GER IRIS field spectrometer has been employed in a laboratory setting to measure the spectral reflectance of multiple layers (1, 2, 3, and 4) of French bean leaves overlayed on three soil backgrounds (peat, sand and loam), each in either a dry or wet (watered to field capacity) condition. Spectral reflectance data for the dry sand and dry peat backgrounds and for both sides of the single bean leaf, over these two backgrounds, were used with a simple model to derive the basic leaf optical properties: the diffuse transmittance and front and back reflectance spectra. These basic leaf optical spectra were then used to simulate the effect of leaf layering over the six background soils at 100 nm intervals between 450 nm and 2450 nm. Reflectance differences over the entire spectrum between the simulated and measured spectra were consistently less than 3 per cent for the six background soils used, with leaf to leaf variability thought to play the major role in the observed variability. These results su...