Using digital cameras for comparative phenological monitoring in an evergreen broad-leaved forest and a seasonal rain forest

Digital cameras have been used in phenological observations for their high accuracy and low labor cost. Most studies successfully use greenness indices derived from digital images for timing the events related to leaf development. However, when timing the leaf senescence events, wide discrepancies between actual and estimated dates are common. In this study, images of three species (two from an evergreen broad-leaved forest and one from a seasonal rain forest) were used to estimate three phenological events of leaf development and senescence. Other than the greenness index, a redness index was also employed. Different annual patterns in color indices developed among the species. The redness index was more accurate when estimating leaf senescence, while the greenness index was more accurate for estimating leaf development events in Acer heptalobum and Machilus bombycina. The absolute differences in estimations of phenological events ranged from -3 to 1 day, which is more accurate than estimates based on the greenness index only (-2 to 27 days). With the introduction of the redness index, this technique has been much improved and is possible to be applied to more species. Furthermore, variations of color indices during periods of phenological events were highly related to the climatic factors with a time lag of around 10 days. Because of the ease of use and efficiency (i.e., automatic daily data output), digital cameras are expected to be used in ecosystem process modeling, networks of phenology assessment and validation of the remote sensing results from satellites. (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.