prosail

Page updated on December 19th, 2011

The combined PROSPECT leaf optical properties model and SAIL canopy bidirectional reflectance model, also referred to as PROSAIL, has been used for about sixteen years to study plant canopy spectral and directional reflectance in the solar domain. PROSAIL has also been used to develop new methods for retrieval of vegetation biophysical properties. It links the spectral variation of canopy reflectance, which is mainly related to leaf biochemical contents, with its directional variation, which is primarily related to canopy architecture and soil/vegetation contrast. This link is key to simultaneous estimation of canopy biophysical/structural variables for applications in agriculture, plant physiology, and ecology at different scales. PROSAIL has become one of the most popular radiative transfer tools due to its ease of use, general robustness, and consistent validation by lab/field/space experiments over the years.

PROSPECT
Outine: Below one can find four compressed files corresponding to the versions 4 and 5 of the PROSPECT model, both in Fortran 90 and Matlab 7. All versions allow to calculate leaf optical properties in the solar domain between 400 nm and 2500 nm (1 nm step). The input variables are the chlorophyll concentration (Cab), the carotenoid concentration (Cxc) [only in PROSPECT-5], the equivalent water thickness (Cw), the dry matter content (Cm) content, and the leaf structure parameter (N). The output variables are the leaf directional-hemispherical reflectance and transmittance. The files "dataSpec_P4" and "dataSpec_P5" contains the specific absorption coefficients of each constituent and the refractive index of leaf material. The specific absorption coefficient corresponding to brown pigment is provided by Frédéric Baret (EMMAH, INRA Avignon, baret@avignon.inra.fr) and used with his autorization.
Source: PROSPECT4_Fortran.zip and PROSPECT4_Matlab.zip for PROSPECT-4, PROSPECT5_Fortran.rar and PROSPECT5_Matlab.rar for PROSPECT-5.
Contact:
Stéphane JACQUEMOUD, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris & Université Paris Diderot (UMR 7154), Géophysique spatiale et planétaire, Bâtiment Lamarck, Case 7011, 35 rue Hélène Brion, 75013 Paris, France (jacquemoud@ipgp.fr)
Jean-Baptiste FERET, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305, USA (jbferet@stanford.edu)
Christophe FRANCOIS, Laboratoire Ecologie, Systématique et Evolution (UMR 8079), Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France (christophe.francois@u-psud.fr)
References:

Féret, J.B., François, C., Asner, G.P., Gitelson, A.A., Martin, R.E., Bidel, L.P.R., Ustin, S.L., le Maire, G., & Jacquemoud, S. (2008), PROSPECT-4 and 5: advances in the leaf optical properties model separating photosynthetic pigments, Remote Sensing of Environment, 112, 3030-3043.
Bousquet, L., Lachérade, S., Jacquemoud, S., & Moya, I. (2005), Leaf BRDF measurement and model for specular and diffuse component differentiation. Remote Sensing of Environment, 98, 201-211.
Baret, F., & Fourty, T. (1997), Estimation of leaf water content and specific leaf weight from reflectance and transmittance measurements. Agronomie, 17, 455-464.
Fourty T., Baret F., Jacquemoud S., Schmuck G., & Verdebout J. (1996), Optical properties of dry leaves with explicite description of their biochemical composition: direct and inverse problems. Remote Sensing of Environment, 56, 104-117.
Jacquemoud, S., Ustin, S.L., Verdebout, J., Schmuck, G., Andreoli, G., & Hosgood, B. (1996), Estimating leaf biochemistry using the PROSPECT leaf optical properties model. Remote Sensing of Environment, 56, 194-202.
Jacquemoud, S., & Baret, F. (1990), PROSPECT: a model of leaf optical properties spectra, Remote Sensing of Environment, 34, 75-91.

Inversion of PROSPECT
Outine: Below one can find the compressed file displaying an example of PROSPECT_5B inversion using Matlab 7.
Source: PROSPECT5_Matlab_inversion.rar
Contact:
Stéphane JACQUEMOUD, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris & Université Paris Diderot (UMR 7154), Géophysique spatiale et planétaire, Bâtiment Lamarck, Case 7011, 35 rue Hélène Brion, 75013 Paris, France (jacquemoud@ipgp.fr)
Javier PACHECO LABRADOR, Laboratorio de Espectro-radiometría y Teledetección Ambiental, C/Albasanz 26-28, 28037 Madrid, Spain (javier.pacheco@cchs.csic.es)

SAIL
Outline: Below one can find a WinZip file containing all the 4SAIL codes plus a sample application program called SAILVTIR that demonstrates the calculation of vegetation cover, emissivity, reflectance, radiance and brightness temperature as a function of LAI. A sample input and output file can be found in the "Release" folder. The output file has been edited to make it better readable. The software has been developed with Visual Fortran.
Source: 4SAIL
Contact:
Wout VERHOEF, International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, P.O. Box 6, 7500 AA Enschede, The Netherlands (verhoef@itc.nl)
References:

Verhoef, W., Xiao, Q., Jia, L., & Su, Z. (2007), Unified optical-thermal four-stream radiative transfer theory for homogeneous vegetation canopies. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 45, 1808-1822.
Verhoef, W., & Bach, H. (2003), Simulation of hyperspectral and directional radiance images using coupled biophysical and atmospheric radiative transfer models. Remote Sensing of Environment, 87, 23-41.
Verhoef, W. (1985), Earth observation modeling based on layer scattering matrices. Remote Sensing of Environment, 17, 165-178.
Verhoef, W. (1984), Light scattering by leaf layers with application to canopy reflectance modeling: the SAIL model. Remote Sensing of Environment, 16, 125-141.

PROSAIL
Outine: Below one can find four WinZip files corresponding to the version of the PROSAIL model, in Fortran 90, Matlab 7 and IDL, which results from the coupling of PROSPECT-5 and 4SAIL.
Source: PROSAIL_5B_Fortran.rar, PROSAIL_5B_Matlab.rar, and PROSAIL_5B_IDL.zip
Contact:
Stéphane JACQUEMOUD, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris & Université Paris Diderot (UMR 7154), Géophysique spatiale et planétaire, Bâtiment Lamarck, Case 7011, 35 rue Hélène Brion, 75013 Paris, France (jacquemoud@ipgp.fr)
Jean-Baptiste FERET, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305, USA (jbferet@stanford.edu)
Christophe FRANCOIS, Laboratoire Ecologie, Systématique et Evolution (UMR 8079), Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France (christophe.francois@u-psud.fr)
Eben BROADBENT, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305, USA (eben@stanford.edu) for the IDL version.
References:

Jacquemoud, S., Verhoef, W., Baret, F., Bacour, C., Zarco-Tejada, P.J., Asner, G.P., François, C., & Ustin, S.L. (2009), PROSPECT + SAIL models: a review of use for vegetation characterization, Remote Sensing of Environment, 113, S56-S66.