Remote sensing the biochemical composition of a slash pine canopy

Airborne imaging spectrometers can record spatially-explicit information on the absorption features associated with foliar biochemicals in a forest canopy. The spectra of a single species pine canopy were recorded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS). Up to three wavebands were correlated to the concentration of chlorophyll, nitrogen, lignin, and cellulose (R/sup 2/=0.96,0.94,0.93, and 0.61, respectively) and the content of these four biochemicals (R/sup 2/=0.98,0.91,0.88, and 0.92, respectively). The AVIRIS data were used, for the first time, to map the content of these biochemicals within the forest canopy and the accuracy was between 3-7% of the mean.