Estimation of light-use efficiency of China's mid-subtropical planted coniferous forest based on flux measurements and spectral observations

The photochemical reflectance index (PRI) calculated from spectral reflectance has universally become a proxy for the light-use efficiency (LUE), which significantly improves the LUE-based estimation of ecosystem gross primary productivity on a large scale through upscaling. In this study, we observed the vegetation spectral reflectance of a planted subtropical coniferous forest from the top of a flux tower at Qianyanzhou Station, one of the ChinaFLUX sites, in September and December 2013, and simultaneously measured CO₂ flux and meteorological variables for correlation and regression analysis. Results showed that PRI had a better correlation with LUE (R²=0.20, P<0.001) than that of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), i.e., PRI was preferred in LUE retrieval. During the whole observation period, PRI and soil water content (SWC)-based bivariate regression model correlated well with LUE (R₂=0.29, P<0.001 and R²=0.30, P<0.01 for daytime and midday observation, respectively), but in autumn the bivariate regression model of PRI and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) had a higher correlation with LUE (R²=0.448, P<0.001) for midday observation, which showed that environmental factors, i.e., SWC and VPD, had a potential in improving the LUE retrieval from PRI, but the choice of appropriate environmental factors depended on season.