PROSAIL model for reflectance simulations of mountainous non-forest communities

Monitoring vegetation cover, especially in mountain and protected areas is an important issue. The analyses were conducted in Krkonose Mountains in the Krkonose National Park, Czech Republic. Heterogeneous non-forest mountain communities were analysed. The aim of the study was to check the possibility of using the Radiative Transfer Model to simulate the reflectance of very diverse mountain non-forest communities. In field measurements, biophysical parameters were collected and calculated to input parameters to the PROSAIL model. At the same time a reference spectrum was acquired. Then, the PROSAIL model was used to simulate the spectrum for each polygon. The accuracy was tested using Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and normalised Root Mean Square Error (nRMSE) values for comparison with the reference spectrum. The average RMSE value for the whole analysed range was equal 0.129. The biggest errors were noticed in the near infrared (0.242) and the smallest in the 400-600 nm range (0.017). Generally, all noticed RMSE and nRMSE values are very diverse and quite big. The acquired results show that PROSAIL can be used to simulate the reflectance, but the model has to be adjusted, especially in the near infrared range.