LAI estimation of agricultural crops from optical data at different spatial resolution

In this study, LAI maps derived from SPOT and MERIS data have been compared. The analysis has been conducted over an agricultural site located in Southern Italy, where temporal series of ground and SPOT and MERIS data have been acquired during the 2006-2008 growing seasons. LAI retrieved from SPOT data has been firstly validated by using in situ measurements. Then, LAI derived from SPOT and MERIS over large fields of wheat, sugar beet and tomato has been compared. Results show that LAI retrieved from MERIS data is underestimated as compared with LAI retrieved from SPOT data. However, for wheat and beet crops, the root mean square error for LAI-MERIS tested over a large number of fields is about 1 m
²
/m
²
, whereas is higher for tomato crop.