Dataset: ECOSENSE hemispherical photo & Leaf Area Index

This release contains the code and dataset used to derive leaf area index (LAI) from digital hemispherical photographs collected at the ECOSENSE forest research site. Hemispherical photographs were acquired at 24 sampling positions in the ECOSENSE forest, located in the municipal forest of Ettenheim in southwestern Germany, in the transition between the Upper Rhine Valley and the Black Forest. The site is a temperate mixed forest dominated by European beech, with patches of spruce, oak, fir, Douglas fir, and pine (Tesch et al., 2025).
The dataset comprises repeated hemispherical photographs collected at 14 time steps between September 2024 and August 2025. For each sampling position and time step, the repository provides raw hemispherical photographs, associated metadata, and derived LAI estimates, together with the processing scripts required for full reproducibility.
The accompanying R workflow implements the full processing chain from hemispherical imagery to LAI estimation. The workflow was originally developed in the context of Lotz et al. (2026) and adapted here for the present release. The workflow is built around the hemispheR R package (Chianucci and Macek, 2023) and uses additional R packages for image processing, data handling, modelling, and visualization.

References
Chianucci, F., and Macek, M. (2023). hemispheR: an R package for fisheye canopy image analysis. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 336, 109470. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109470
Lotz, S., Kattenborn, T., Frey, J., Soltani, S., Göritz, A., Jaksztat, T., and Katal, N. (2026). Litter vs. Lens: Evaluating LAI from Litter Traps and Hemispherical Photos Across View Zenith Angles and Leaf Fall Phases. Biogeosciences, 23, 1949–1963. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-23-1949-2026
Tesch, J., Kühnhammer, K., Wagner, D., Christen, A., Dormann, C., Frey, J., Grote, R., Kattenborn, T., Sulzer, M., Wallrabe, U., Weiler, M., Werner, C., Baghbani, S., Brzozon, J., Comella, L. M., Dedden, L., Dumberger, S., Frey, Y., Gassilloud, M., Gerach, T., Göritz, A., Haberstroh, S., Klüppel, J., Kremer, L., Kreuzwieser, J., Lee, H., Maack, J., Müller, J., Prucker, O., Rajak, S. K., Rühe, J., Rupitsch, S. J., Schack-Kirchner, H., Scharinger, C., Shinde, U., Steinmann, T., Stock, C., and Strack, J. (2025). The ECOSENSE forest: A distributed sensor and data management system for real-time monitoring of ecosystem processes and stresses. EGUsphere [preprint]. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4979