CIMES: A package of programs for determining canopy geometry and solar radiation regimes through hemispherical photographs

CIMES is a multi-purpose, multi-platform, and free package of programs for the determination of solar radiation regimes and canopy structure attributes using hemispherical photographs. These command-line programs, like a toolbox, offer a unique set of features such as: a variety of approaches to invert gap fraction data, correction for slope (solar radiation and LAI), and different procedures to account for foliage clumping, spherical statistics for gap fraction distribution, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) interception under clear- and overcast sky conditions, and sun-fleck dynamics. We present the general overview of the programs, the solar radiation regime, and the canopy structure estimates as processed by CIMES software. The most important point of CIMES compared to other software would be to have statistics and estimates for each single photosite including all available theoretical and empirical algorithms, so that anyone working on methods rather than application will have more freedom compared to other software. For application, the batch processing does everything.