Modeling canopy conductance and transpiration from solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence

Vegetation transpiration (T) is the process of plant water loss through the stomata on the leaf surface and plays a key role in the energy and water balance of the land surface, especially with dense vegetation cover. To date, however, estimation of ecosystem-scale T is still rather uncertain mainly due to errors in modeling canopy resistance or conductance. Considering the intrinsic link between photosynthesis and chlorophyll fluorescence, the recent available remote sensing of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) provides a valuable opportunity to estimate plants T at large scales. In this study, we demonstrate how remote sensing of SIF relates to canopy stomatal conductance and transpiration at diurnal and seasonal scales with continuous ground measurements of SIF at three flux sites in forest, cropland and grassland ecosystems. The results show that both ground and spaceborne SIF observations are good indicators of canopy conductance at both diurnal and seasonal scales (R2 = 0.57 and 0.74 for forest, R2 = 0.62 and 0.80 for cropland, R2 = 0.52 and 0.63 for grassland, respectively). Then, empirical SIF-based canopy conductance models are employed to estimate hourly and daily transpiration. We evaluate our ecosystem T estimations against latent heat fluxes measured by eddy covariance systems with more satisfactory results for forest (R2 = 0.57 and 0.71), and cropland (R2 = 0.77 and 0.83) than for grassland (R2 = 0.13 and 0.22) at hourly and daily time scales. Our results suggest the potential of remotely-sensed SIF for estimating canopy conductance and plant transpiration, but a more mechanistic understanding is needed for their link.