Spectral Variability Analysis of In-Situ Hyperspectral Remote Sensing at Leaf and Branch Scales for Tree Species at Tropical Urban Forest

Abstract

Spectral variability analysis has been carried out on in-situ hyperspectral remote sensing data for 20 tree species available in tropical forest in Malaysia. Five different spectral ranges have been tested to evaluate the influence of intra-species spectral variability at specific spectral range given by different spatial scales (i.e. leaf to branch scales). The degree of intra-species spectral variability was not constant among different spectral ranges where the influence of spatial scale towards intra-species spectral variability at these spectral ranges was found increasing from leaf to branch scale. The ratio of leaves to non-photosynthetic tissues has made branch scale significantly influent the intra-species spectral variability. Results have shown that a specific spectral range was species sensitive on the intra-species and inter-species spectral variability in this study. This study also suggested the use of species sensitive wavelengths extracted from specific spectral range in hyperspectral remote sensing data in order to achieve good accuracy in tree species classification.