A range of environmental descriptors can be retrieved from Planetscope data and the following provides an overview and more information on these can be found in the DATA section of Living Wales.
Environmental Descriptors
Phenology
Planetscope data provide more detailed insight into the subtle differences of phenology within a small region and can be easier linked to individual species and ground point measurements (i.e. field camera and flux tower data) than other coarser-resolution images.
Leaf Area Index
The adopted RF [RandomForest] machine-learning approach was shown to reproduce the Landsat-8 reference LAI with high accuracy… based on a relatively limited suite of spectral variables…. This was despite the fact that a more spectrally enhanced dataset, including critical bands in the shortwave infrared domain, was needed for the Landsat-based LAI retrieval in order to…
Herbaceous Biomass
To estimate saltmarsh biomass in the USA from Planet multi-spectral Planetscope data, a combination of the modified soil vegetation index 2 (MSAVI2) and the visible difference vegetation index (VDVI) gave the best fit to the square root-normalized biomass data collected in the field at North Inlet (Willmott’s index of agreement d = 0.74, RMSE =…