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Original address of this page: https://rami-benchmark.jrc.ec.europa.eu/HTML/RAMI-IV/EXPERIMENTS4/ACTUAL_CANOPIES/SHORT_ROTATION_FOREST/SHORT_ROTATION_FOREST.php  
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Agricultural crops: Short Rotation Forest: HET16_SRF

This page provides descriptions of the architectural, spectral and illumination related properties of a short rotation forest of poplar clones located in the Parco Ticino of northern Italy. The scene is based on data provided courtesy of Roberto Colombo, Michele Meroni, Lorenzo Busetto and colleagues (Remote Sensing of Environmental Dynamics Lab., DISAT, University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy) who, - carried out a detailed measurement campaign at this site in the frame of the EC Joint Research Centre's Kyoto experiment in 2004. Linda Hunt, from Science Systems and Applications Inc (USA), generated an L-system based model of the 1 year old poplar clones suitable for ingestion into 3D canopy RT models. Thus, potential RAMI participants are to treat the information presented on this page as actual 'inventory data', that is, they should identify/extract those parameters and characteristics that are required as input to their canopy reflectance models. In some cases this may mean that simplifications have to be made to the available information, or, that parts of the available information can not be exploited with a given radiative transfer model. Whatever the case may be, all potential RAMI participants should mimic the standard practices that they use when matching actual field measurements to the required set(s) of input parameters of their model(s). If this means that you need more information than provided, please do not hesitate in contacting us. Last but not least, for those 3D models capable of maintaining architectural fidelity down to the individual shoot and branch level a series of ASCII (text) files containing the Cartesian coordinates of various geometric primitives (triangles, spheres and cylinders) and their transformations will be given. This should facilitate the reconstruction of the short rotation forest architecture as it is described on this page.

In order to facilitate the generation of the poplar short rotation forest the information on this page has been subdivided into four different categories. For each one of these categories the relevant descriptions will be contained within a uniquely coloured text frame and can be accessed by clicking on one of the four links below:

In case of difficulties or missing data on this page please do not hesitate in contacting us so that the problems may be resolved as fast as possible.

Architectural information 

1) General canopy characteristics The Poplar short rotation forest scene is generated over an area of approximately 100×100 m² . The center of the coordinate system lies almost in the middle of the scene. The trees are planted in double rows. The distance from the center of one double row to the center of the next double row is about 3.55 m. Each tree row is about 0.375 m from the center of that double row. Within a given row, neighbouring trees are separated from each other by a distance of about 0.45 m. However, 2% of the potential tree positions are void due to missing trees. Overall, the architectural characteristics of the scene are thus as follows: Scene dimensions: (ΔX × ΔY × ΔZ) 99.8 × 100.9 × 3.41 [m × m × m] (Xmin, Ymin, Zmin) −49.70, −50.45, −0.025 [m,m,m] (Xmax, Ymax, Zmax) 49.70, 50.45, 3.385 [m,m,m] Number of trees in scene 11924 [-] Fractional scene coverage* 0.392 [-] distance between 2 double row centers 3.55 [m] tree distance from double row center 0.375 [m] distance between two trees in single row 0.45 [m] missing trees in planting scheme 2 [%] Leaf Area Index of scene 3.21917 [m² ⁄ m²] *The fractional cover is defined as 1 - direct transmission at zero solar zenith angle. 2) Foliage structure The table below provides the structural characteristics of the leaves that feature within the poplar Short Rotation Forest. Indicated are average properties since the leaves within a single tree vary somewhat in their size and shape. foliage shape depiction: Maximum leaf length 6.837 cm Maximum leaf width 3.688 cm One-sided foliage area 42.81 cm² foliage curl none structural description file (ASCII) file 3) Tree structure The poplar Short Rotation Forest is generated on the basis of 6 individual tree representations of the Populus Nigra species. The table below provides an overview of some structural characteristics of these 6 tree representations. For those RT models capable of representing the 3D architecture of a given trees through a series of geometric primitives, the last three lines of each table contain links to data files with detailed specifications of the foliage and wood structural properties of the poplar Short Rotation Forest trees. tree identifier PONI1 PONI2 PONI3 PONI4 PONI5 PONI6 tree height* [m] 2.15 2.35 2.56 2.77 2.98 3.40 Foliage normal distribution: zenith angle= graph data graph data graph data graph data graph data graph data Foliage normal distribution: azimuth angle= graph data graph data graph data graph data graph data graph data crown radiusx mean [m]: maximum [m]: picture 0.50 0.21 picture 0.50 0.21 picture 0.50 0.21 picture 0.50 0.21 picture 0.50 0.21 picture 0.50 0.21 number of leaves per tree 633 633 633 633 633 633 vertical profile of leaf area o [m²] graph data graph data graph data graph data graph data graph data total woody surface area [m²] 0.39325 0.414255 0.434661 0.455488 0.476147 0.517729 tree shape image foliage structure (ASCII file) file file file file file file wood structure (ASCII file) wood wood wood wood wood wood * The height given here is the total height (i.e., starting from −0.025 up to the top of the tree). = Rather than spanning the full range of possible zenith angles (i.e., from 0 to 180 degree) as could be expected for non-flat asymmetric objects, it was chosen to follow the convention of foliage normals pointing only into the upper hemisphere. This is because RAMI participants, that make use of this foliage normal distribution information, will in all likelihood have models where scatterers are represented as flat (disc or equilateral triangle shaped) objects. However, should your model require a description of the foliage normal zenith angle distribution up to 180 degrees then please do not hesitate in contacting us and we will provide this information to you. For both the zenith and azimuth angle distributions the 'graph' link shows an image of the normalised foliage normal distribution versus zenith (or azimuth) angle of the foliage normal. The 'data' files for the zenith and azimuth angle distribution have three columns indicating 1) the upper value of the zenith (or azimuth) angle in a given bin, 2) the normalised amount of foliage area having a normal in this zenith (or azimuth) angle range, and 3) the normalised amount of wood area having a normal that falls in this zenith (or azimuth) angle range. Bin angle widths were chosen to be 5 degrees and 10 degrees for zenith and azimuth angles, respectively. x The crown radius of actual trees is varying with azimuth angle. This can be seen in the various pictures showing a perspective-free nadir view of a given tree located at x=0,y=0 (concentric circles indicate the distance from the origin in steps of 0.25m). The mean and maximum values were computed from the triangle objects making up the 3D trees depicted in the picture in the the third-last row of each table column. o The data files have 3 columns: lower-height-of-bin-in-units-of-meters     upper-height-of-bin-in-units-of-meters     area-of-wood-or-foliage-in-units-of-m2. 4) Stand structure The poplar Short Rotation Forest is composed of 11924 individual trees. The following table indicates how these trees are distributed among the above tree classes and specifies the respective x,y locations of the tree centers of each tree class in the scene. The last row contains an ASCII file with tree translation and rotation information for those RT models capable of ingesting the detailed 3D architecture of the tree models specified in the previous section. tree identifier PONI1 PONI2 PONI3 PONI4 PONI5 PONI6 tree number per class 967 1973 2914 2978 2042 1050 x,y coordinates of tree centers [m,m] data data data data data data tree rotations and translation (ASCII file)x data data data data data data Tree locations for the poplar Short Rotation Forest. The origin of the coordinate system is in the center of the image. RAMI participants with 3D RT models capable of representing objects using geometric primitives can download a single compressed ZIP archive with all the tree architectural ASCII information that is listed in the above tables by clicking HERE. Note: The size of the compressed archive is about 0.4 megabytes. It contains 19 ASCII files and can be unzipped using 'WINZIP' on windows or 'unzip' on linux/unix operating systems. The inflated archive will take up about 2 Megabytes of storage.

spectral canopy characteristics 

illumination characteristics 

Five different illumination conditions are to be simulated for the poplar Short Rotation Forest. More specifically the solar zenith angle (SZA) is 0, 20 or 50 degrees and the solar azimuth angle is equal to 0 or 90 degree. Only direct solar radiation is to be considered in these experiments. The experimental identifier <EXP> that is needed in the naming of the various measurement results files (see file naming and formatting conventions) for the poplar Short Rotation Forest scene is given by HET16_SRF_$$$_B**_## where $$$ relates to the solar azimuth angle, B** relates to the spectral bands (B01, B02, …, B19) and ## relates to the solar zenith angle. The following image shows the experimental identifiers of the various experiments (right hand side) together with the correct solar azimuth (yellow) and zenith (white) angle overlaid onto the orchard geometry (left hand side).

measurement characteristics 

Prior to the performing of any RT model simulations, please refer to the 'definitions' pages for detailed instructions regarding the angular sign conventions for BRF simulations, as well as other RT model technicalities. Also read the relevant file naming and formatting conventions that must be adhered to by all participants. In addition, RAMI-IV offers participants the possibility to test the compliance of their model-generated results files with these file-naming and formatting convention, prior to their submission via ftp: To do so follow the on-line format checker link that appears in the top navigation bar during the active submission period.