Red-Edge Band Vegetation Indices for Leaf Area Index Estimation From Sentinel-2/MSI Imagery

The estimation of leaf area index (LAI) from optical remotely sensed data based on vegetation indices (VIs) is a quick and practical approach to acquire LAI over vast areas. Reflectance in the red-edge bands is sensitive to vegetation status, and its information is thought to be useful in agricultural applications. Based on three red-edge band observations (represented as RE1, RE2, and RE3 for bands 5–7) from the Multispectral Instrument (MSI) onboard the Sentinel-2 satellite, this article aims to investigate the feasibility and performance of using red-edge bands for LAI estimates with the VI method and ground-measured LAI data sets. Sensitivity analysis from PROSAIL simulations revealed that RE1 is mainly affected by the influence of the leaf chlorophyll content, and this uncertainty should not be ignored during LAI estimation. For the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), modified simple ratio (MSR), chlorophyll index (CI), and wide dynamic range vegetation index (WDRVI), the optimal combination of Sentinel-2 bands for LAI estimation was RE2 and RE3, with a minimum root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 0.75. Four 3-band red-edge VIs were proposed to exploit the full content of the red-edge bands of Sentinel-2, and their performance in LAI estimation improved slightly. However, both 2-band red-edge VIs and 3-band red-edge VIs remained slightly saturated at high LAI levels; therefore, a segmental estimation with a threshold was suggested for large LAIs. The results indicate that the optimal 2-band red-edge VIs and proposed 3-band red-edge VIs are effective tools for crop LAI estimation in multiple-growth stages with Sentinel-2 MSI images.