Validation of sentinel-2 leaf area index (LAI) product derived from SNAP toolbox and its comparison with global LAI products in an African semi-arid agricultural landscape

This study validated SNAP-derived LAI from Sentinel-2 and its consistency with existing global LAI products. The validation and inter-comparison experiments were performed on two processing levels, i. e., Top-of-Atmosphere and Bottom-of-Atmosphere reflectances and two spatial resolutions, i.e., 10 m, and 20 m. These were chosen to determine their effect on retrieved LAI accuracy and consistency. The results showed moderate R-2, i.e., similar to 0.6 to similar to 0.7 between SNAP-derived LAI and in-situ LAI, but with high errors, i.e., RMSE, BIAS, and MAE >2 m(2) m(-2) with marked differences between processing levels and insignificant differences between spatial resolutions. In contrast, inter-comparison of SNAP-derived LAI with MODIS and Proba-V LAI products revealed moderate to high consistencies, i. e., R-2 of similar to 0.55 and similar to 0.8 respectively, and RMSE of similar to 0.5 m(2) m(-2) and similar to 0.6 m(2) m(-2), respectively. The results in this study have implications for future use of SNAP-derived LAI from Sentinel-2 in agricultural landscapes, suggesting its global applicability that is essential for large-scale agricultural monitoring. However, enormous errors in characterizing field-level LAI variability indicate that SNAP-derived LAI is not suitable for precision farming. In fact, from the study, the need for further improvement of LAI retrieval arises, especially to support farm-level agricultural management decisions.