The application of a geometric optical canopy reflectance model to semiarid shrub vegetation

Estimates are obtained of the average plant size and density of shrub vegetation on the basis of SPOT High Resolution Visible Multispectral imagery from Chihuahuan desert areas, using the Li and Strahler (1985) model. The aggregated predictions for a number of stands within a class were accurate to within one or two standard errors of the observed average value. Accuracy was highest for those classes of vegetation where the nonrandom scrub pattern was characterized for the class on the basis of the average coefficient of the determination of density.