This set of experiments was suggested to simulate the radiative transfer regime under conservative scattering conditions for heterogeneous environments.
These scenes - which are structurally identical to those used for the turbid floating spheres test cases in the solar domain - are composed of a large number of non overlapping spherical objects representing the individual plant crowns, located over and only partially covering a horizontal plane standing for the underlying soil surface.

These objects, in turn, contained a 'gas' (to be treated as a turbid medium) of dimension-less particles representing the leaves. These scattering particles were characterized by conservative radiative properties (reflectance=0.5, transmittance=0.5), and the orientation of the normals to the scatterers followed exclusively a uniform distribution function. The radiative properties of the underlying soil were also specified (in this case a simple Lambertian scattering law) with the surface albedo being unity.

The following figures exhibit a graphical representation that approximates the impression that such a scene gives when viewed from the side:

Architecture scene

The architecture of this scene (HET02) is precisely characterized as follows:

Scene dimensions:

where the Leaf Area Index (LAI) is the total foliage area within a sphere divided by the cross sectional area of that sphere.

The coordinates (X, Y, Z) of the sphere centers are as follows:

The underlying soil is occupying the entire lower surface of the scene, i.e., the area enclosed between the following coordinates: (−50.0, −50.0, 0.0), (−50.0, +50.0, 0.0), (+50.0, −50.0, 0.0), and (+50.0, +50.0, 0.0), where all values are in meters.

The tables below provide the details required to execute each of the experiments in this category.

The tables below provide the details required to execute each of the experiments in this category. Every table is preceeded by the corresponding experiment identifier that is needed in the naming of the various measurement results files (see file naming and formatting conventions).