Fig. 3: Workflow of revealing the impact of vertical leaf angle dynamics on satellite-derived vegetation indices.

The leaf angle observations are based on AngleCam³⁷, a computer vision method that was trained to derive leaf angle dynamics from plants in the foreground of plant photographs. For simplicity, the dynamics of vertical leaf angles are visualized as average leaf angles, while the AngleCam method³⁷ predicts leaf angle distributions between 0 to 90 degrees. The obtained leaf angle dynamics are then used as input to simulate the effect on 124 commonly used vegetation indices (VIs)⁶ through radiative transfer models.