Fig. 5: The effect (ΔVI%) of vertical leaf angle dynamics on 124 vegetation indices.

ΔVI% (left) is the relative difference of vegetation index values with and without integrating actual vertical leaf angle dynamics. The mean of the absolute correlation per species of ΔVI with relative soil moisture and vapor pressure deficit (right) highlights that the effect of vertical leaf angles on VIs is controlled by environmental variables, which may not be related to the variable of interest (e.g. chlorophyll content). Indices shown in Fig. 4 are highlighted with bold font.