Research project

Validation for Vegetation 2 (VAL4VEG)

Project overview

Fiducial Reference Measurements for Vegetation (FRM4VEG) is a European Space Agency (ESA) managed project focused on establishing the protocols required for traceable in-situ measurements of vegetation-related parameters, to support the validation of Copernicus products from Sentinel-2, -3, and PROBA-V.

University of Southampton are leading, a framework for evaluating the uncertainty of indirect in-situ measurements of Canopy Chlorophyll Content using metrological principles. This included identification of uncertainty sources related to in-situ measurements of leaf chlorophyll concentration and Leaf area index and propagation of these through to Canopy Chlorophyll Content. A detail methodology is being established on how to calibrate non descriptive chlorophyll meters using wet chemistry and propagate those measurements to canopy level to constitute canopy chlorophyll content Fiducial Reference Measurement. Exiting upscaling methods are refined to take into account in-situ measurement uncertainty and provide per-pixel uncertainties in output maps (not previously achieved). Number of field campaigns supports these activities across Europe.

Staff

Lead researchers

Professor Jadu Dash

Professor of Remote Sensing

Research interests

  • Satellite derived land surface phenology and its validation with ground data
  • Developing a chlorophyll content based production efficiency model to quantify terrestrial carbon uptake
  • Impact of extreme climatic events on vegetation phenology
Connect with Jadu

Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs