AN AEROSOL TYPE CLASSIFICATION METHOD BASED ON REMOTE SENSING DATA IN GUANGDONG, CHINA

Understanding how leaves absorb carbon from the atmosphere is essential for predicting changes in global forests. Young leaves play a key role in this process, but their efficiency has been difficult to measure at large scales. Using satellite data, we developed a new method to track the seasonal patterns of young leaves’ photosynthetic capacity from 2001 to 2018. Our dataset helps scientists better understand forest growth and how ecosystems respond to climate change.

We developed the first time-mapped, continental-scale gridded dataset of monthly leaf area index (LAI) in three leaf age cohorts (i.e., young, mature, and old) from 2001–2018 data (referred to as Lad-LAI). The seasonality of three LAI cohorts from the new Lad-LAI product agrees well at eight sites with very fine-scale collections of monthly LAI. The proposed satellite-based approaches can provide references for mapping finer spatiotemporal-resolution LAI products with different leaf age cohorts.