European Commission - RAMI website

This page provides descriptions of the architectural, spectral and illumination related properties of a 49 year old Betula pendula stand located near 58° 16′ 38.67″ N 27° 20′ 30.38″ E. The stand was inventoried in the summer 2007 by Andres Kuusk, Joel Kuusk, Mait Lang, Tõnu Lükk, Matti Mõttus, Tiit Nilson, Miina Rautiainen, and Alo Eenmäe of the Tartu Observatory, in Tõravere, Estonia as well as the Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia. Potential RAMI participants thus 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 birch canopy architecture as it is described on this page.

Figure 1: Järvselja Birch Stand (Summer) scene description.

Architectural information

The Järvselja birch forest inventory was carried out over a 100×100 m² area placing the origin of the coordinate system at its south-western end. In order to include also the tree crowns of the inventoried tree locations within the RAMI birch Stand representation it was necessary to expand the scene area slightly beyond one hectare. Maintaining the origin of the tree location coordinate system thus resulted in some negative x,y values in the table below. Overall architectural characteristics of the scene are thus as follows:

Scene dimensions:( X × Y × Z)	105.5115 × 106.1535 × 30.5130 [m × m × m]
(Xmin, Ymin, Zmin)	−2.6507, −2.9759, 0.0 [m, m, m]
(Xmax, Ymax, Zmax)	102.8608, 103.1776, 30.5130 [m, m, m]
Number of trees in scene	1029 (465 BEPE, 205 TICO, 196 ALGL, POTR 78, PIAB 39, FREX 30, ACPL 16)
Leaf Area Index of scene*	3.442
Fractional scene coverage**	0.5044

Table 1: architectural information.

*The LAI of the pine trees is computed using half the total area of the needles in a shoot.

**The fractional cover is defined as 1 - direct transmission at zero solar zenith angle.

Foliage structure

The table below provides the structural characteristics of the foliage elements (leaves, shoots) associated with the seven tree species that constitute the RAMI Järvselja birch stand. In every case the shape of these foliage elements was approximated from photographs. RT models capable of representing the detailed architecture of individual foliage elements may want to use the information provided in the ASCII (text) files accessible from the last row in each table below.

Tree species:	Betula pendula	Tilia cordata	Almus glutinosa	Populus tremuloides	Fraxinus exelsior	Acer platenoides	Picea abies
foliage shape:
Max. foliage length °	6.92 cm	10.42 cm	7.56 cm	8.08	cm 24.7 cm	18.8 cm	14.2 cm
Max. radial extent of foliage +	2.58 cm	4.51 cm	2.72 cm	3.09 cm	8.70 cm	6.81 cm	3.56 cm
one-sided foliage area x	20.7 cm^²	52.5 cm^²	23.4 cm^²	18.8 cm^²	176.6 cm^²	139.6 cm^²	83.2 cm^²
twig length	0.5 cm	2.9 cm	1.0 cm	3.0 cm	16.1 cm	7.96 cm	3 - 6 cm#
twig diameter	0.3 cm	0.3 cm	0.3 cm	0.2 cm	0.3 cm	0.3 cm	0.3 cm
foliage curl	none	none	none	none	none	none	none
structural description file (ASCII)	file	file	file	file	file	file	file

Table 2: foliage structure.

°: the foliage length is measured from the bottom of the twig to the tip of the upper leaves/needles, i.e., it is the maximum vertical distance of the images displayed in the first row of this table

+: the maximum radial foliage extension is defined as the maximum distance from the axis connecting the bottom of the twig to the tip of the elementary foliage unit, i.e., along the vertical in the pictures displayed in the first row of this table).

#: a detailed description of the structural characteristics of the Picea abies shoot structure can be found in the header of the structural description file accessible via the link at the bottom of this table column.

x: in the case of the Picea Abies shoots this one-sided foliage area value is half the total needle surface area (i.e., the value obtained when summing up the maximum silhouette areas of all individual needles in the shoot). Here needles are assumed to be elongated spheres. If individual needles are represented as cylinders (with discs as endcaps) then the total needle area of the shoot will be different and the number of shoots per pine tree should be adjusted accordingly.

Tree structure

The Järvselja Birch forest is generated on the basis of 18 individual tree representations. These are distributed among the following tree species: ACPL=maple (Acer Platenoides), BEPE1-4=birch (Betula Pendula), ALGL1-4=alder (Almus Glutinosa), TICO1-5=linden (Tilio Cordata), POTR1-2=poplar (Populus Tremuloides), PIAB=norway spruce (Picea Abies), and FREX=ash (Fraxinus Exelsior). The two tables below provides an overview of some structural characteristics of these 18 tree representations.

NOTE: all footnotes are listed at the end of the second table. For those RT models capable of representing the 3D architecture of a given tree through a series of geometric primitives, the last lines of each table contain links to data files with detailed specifications of the foliage and wood structural properties of the Järvselja Birch forest (summer) trees.

tree identifier	PIAB	ACPL	BEPE1	BEPE2	BEPE3	BEPE4	ALGL1	ALGL2	ALGL3	ALGL4	FREX	TICO1	TICO2	TICO3	TICO4	TICO5	POTR1	POTR2
tree height [m]		10.90	15.37	19.86	25.49	27.99	30.51	19.35	22.58	25.76	27.09	13.72	5.91	11.27	14.41	18.34	20.70	25.27	30.49
Foliage normal distribution: zenith angle=		graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	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	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data
height to live/green crown [m]		1.82	7.57	12.93	16.43	15.23	18.36	10.14	12.60	14.46	16.95	6.60	1.85	5.93	7.69	7.82	7.56	18.37	16.52
crown radiusx	mean [m]	0.50	1.14	0.75	0.81	1.12	1.26	0.59	0.85	1.13	1.54	1.02	1.26	0.79	0.98	1.02	1.07	1.36	1.21
	maximum [m]	1.60	2.23	1.95	2.19	3.11	3.56	1.92	2.31	2.78	3.60	2.25	2.55	1.93	2.38	2.47	2.65	2.65	3.15
	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture	picture
vertical profile of crown radii* [m]		graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data
total foliage area of tree [m^²]#		9.9413	13.6225	10.2282	32.2435	75.3714	93.9876	12.9206	29.3120	69.679	120.983	20.288	8.8554	18.073	27.528	58.319	92.0224	37.7483	143.369
vertical profile of leaf area° [m]		graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data
trunk DBH+ [cm]		10.5	11.5	11.5	17.5	26.0	31.0	15.0	21.0	28.0	35.0	9.5	7	9	12	15	17	17	28.0
total wood area of tree [m^²]		9.0521	14.9699	17.9155	37.2472	63.5946	67.1165	34.1871	47.251	50.279	73.082	11.267	5.8304	8.940	16.522	23.817	41.6288	41.3079	103.829
vertical profile of wood area° [m^²]		graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data	graph data
tree shape image
foliage structure (triangle mesh)		file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file	file
wood structure (triangle mesh)		wood	wood	stem branch	stem branch	stem branch	stem branch	wood	wood	wood	wood	wood	wood	wood	wood	wood	wood	stem branch	stem branch

Table 3: tree structure.

=: for shoots the zenith angle of the foliage normal is defined as the angle between the vertical and the normal of the inner twig of the shoot (for a shoot axis aligned along the z-axis the normal was arbitrarily chosen to lie along the y-axis). Rather than spanning the full range of possible zenith angles (i.e., from 0 to 180°) 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° 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 fraction of foliage area having a normal in this zenith (or azimuth) angle range, and 3) the fraction of wood area having a normal that falls in this zenith (or azimuth) angle range. Bin angle widths were chosen to be 5° and 10° 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 fourth-last row of each table column.

*: the graphs show the maximum radial distance of foliage elements in a given height interval plotted against the upper height level of that height interval. The data files have five columns: lower height of bin (m) upper height of bin (m) minimum_radial-distance_of_foliage-in-units-of-m maximum_radial-distance_of_foliage-in-units-of-m. mean_radial-distance_of_foliage-in-units-of-m

#: this value corresponds to the one-sided leaf area for flat leaves. For Norway spruce trees it corresponds to the sum of the (maximum) silhouettes of all the individual needles in the tree (i.e., half the total needle area per tree).

o: the data files have 3 columns: lower height of bin (m) upper height of bin (m) area of wood or foliage (m²).

+: this is the nominal value derived from the inventory data for a tree of this height. The actual value of the tree representations provided in the ASCII files at the bottom of this table might be slightly different.

Stand structure

The Järvselja Birch forest is composed of 1029 individual trees. The following two tables indicates how these trees are distributed among the above tree classes and specifies their respective x,y locations of the tree centers of each tree class in the forest stand. The last row of each table contains an ASCII file with tree rotation and translation information for those RT models capable of ingesting the detailed 3D architecture of the tree models specified in the previous section.

tree identifier	ACPL	BEPE1	BEPE2	BEPE3	BEPE4	ALGL1	ALGL2	ALGL3	ALGL4	FREX	TICO1	TICO2	TICO3	TICO4	TICO5	PIAB	POTR1	POTR2
tree number per class	16	115	246	92	12	50	97	38	11	30	17	43	63	62	20	39	61	17
x,y coordinates of tree centers [m,m]	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data
tree rotations and translation (ASCII file)x	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data	data

Table 4: stand structure.

x: these files contain pseudo code to rotate individual trees around their z axis and translate them from the origin to the x,y locations specified in the data files of the previous row of this table. Positive rotation angles in these files indicate that when looking down from the positive Z axis towards the origin of the coordinate system a counterclockwise rotation will result in moving the positive x axis towards the positive y axis. The angle of rotation is in the 7th column of these datafiles (starting from the count from 1).

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 38.6 megabytes. It contains 67 ASCII files and can be unzipped using 'WINZIP' on windows or 'unzip' on linux/unix operating systems.

Beware that the inflated archive will take up 237.1 Megabytes of storage.

Figure 4: Tree species and locations for the Järvselja birch stand. The origin of the coordinate system is in the lower left hand side corner of the image.

Spectral canopy characteristics

All of the foliage wood and background components in the Järvselja Birch Stand (summer) scene feature LAMBERTIAN scattering properties. The tables below contain spectral characteristics of the Järvselja birch forest for fourteen different spectral bands. The experimental identifier for the Järvselja Birch Stand (Summer) scene is given by HET09_JBS_SUM_B**_36 where BBB is one of the spectral bands of RAMI-V (O03,O04,O06,O08,O10,O11,O12,M08,O17,MD5,M11,MD7,M12,GED). A text file summarising all of the information in this table can be found here.

Illumination characteristics

The illumination conditions are very likely dependent on the kind of measurement in RAMI-V more than in previous RAMI phases. For brf*, dhr, fabs*, ftran* measurements, except brf_sat, the illumination were listed in the description of measure brfpp, and duplicated in other measure description pages. For these geometries the tag will be _zZZaAAA_ with ZZ and AAA defining $\theta_i$ and $\phi_i$, respectively. In addition, diffuse isotropic illumination is foreseen for bhr, fabs*, ftran* measures (geometry tag will then be _DIFFUSE_). lidar* like measurements and thp illumination are described in the relevant measure description pages, and are the same for all scenes for which they are foreseen.

Scene	Site	Jan	Apr	Jul
HET09_JBS_SUM	Järvselja		_z56a153_	_z41a147_

Table 5: Illumination conditions.