[OPTICAL REVIEW Vol. 9, No. 2 (2002) 37-39]
Remote Estimation of the Chlorophyll Concentration of Living Trees Using Laser-induced Fluorescence Imaging Lidar
Yasunori SAITO*, Koh-jiro KURIHARA, Hiroaki TAKAHASHI, Fumitoshi KOBAYASHI, Takuya KAWAHARA, Akio NOMURA and Satomi TAKEDA1
Department of Information Engineering, Shinshu University, 4-17-1 Wakasato, Nagano 380-8553, Japan 1Department of Environmental Science, Osaka Women's University, 21 Daisen-cho, Sakai 590-0035, Japan
(Received October 29, 2001; Accepted December 13, 2001)
Monthly variation in chlorophyll concentration of living ginko tree leaves 65 m away from a system was remotely estimated by a laser-induced fluorescence imaging lidar. The combination of a pulsed laser and a short-time gated CCD using an image intensifier made it possible to monitor the weak fluorescence signal from the ginko tree leaves as an image. By applying the experimental idea that a ratio of intensity of the chlorophyll fluorescence at 740 nm to that at 685 nm showed a linear correlation to the chlorophyll concentration, the fluorescence image of the ginko tree obtained by the lidar was converted to the chlorophyll concentration distribution image.
Key words: chlorophyll, tree, laser-induced fluorescence, lidar, image, CCD