According to Olimerca, through a 3D physical model developed by researchers from the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture (IAS), belonging to the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), it is now possible to know the health status of trees, including olive trees, no interference from the surrounding understory in data collection.
In this way, it is possible to detect alterations in the state of health of tree specimens, even if they have other vegetation next to them in a different situation, for example affected by a plague, something that until now interfered with the result of the analysis.
When discriminating some plants from others, one of the parameters that is measured is fluorescence, a non-visible indicator that allows us to know the health status of the vegetation, revealing if it suffers any negative environmental or living being effects.
This emission of light is very relevant in natural stands, and not less in cultivated ones, such as the olive grove. «When you work with certain satellites, the resolutions of the images are much lower, and a tree cannot be discriminated with the naked eye, hence the effect of the canopy and the surrounding undergrowth has not been studied separately,» he points out to the Fundación Discover IAS researcher Alberto Hornero, main author of the study ‘Assessing the contribution of understory sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence through 3-D radiative transfer modeling and field data’, published in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment.
The study affects the forest environment, stressed among other factors due to the progressive effects of climate change. The model has already been evaluated before its application, which will be effective when the FLEX satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) is launched, operational in the next two years, according to the expert.
Even if the bushes are located under the canopy of the trees, it is possible to differentiate them from them at the time of analysis. «The importance of the model is that it interprets the satellite images that will provide information on the composition and state of the vegetation at a global level,» adds Hornero. The model also considers the effect of the ground, although it does not emit any fluorescence, since it interferes with the signal collected by satellites of medium and low resolutions.
The work has been carried out in international collaboration with the University of Swansea (United Kingdom), the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Germany), the Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany) and the University of Melbourne (Australia). It has received funding from the Ministry of Science and Innovation; a contract from the European Space Agency; and the National Center for Earth Observation (UK).