Evaluation of hyperspectral LiDAR for monitoring rice leaf nitrogen by comparison with multispectral LiDAR and passive spectrometer

Fast and nondestructive assessment of leaf nitrogen concentration (LNC) is critical for crop growth diagnosis and nitrogen management guidance. In the last decade, multispectral LiDAR (MSL) systems have promoted developments in the earth and ecological sciences with the additional spectral information. With more wavelengths than MSL, the hyperspectral LiDAR (HSL) system provides greater possibilities for remote sensing crop physiological conditions. This study compared the performance of ASD FieldSpec Pro FR, MSL, and HSL for estimating rice (Oryza sativa) LNC. Spectral reflectance and biochemical composition were determined in rice leaves of different cultivars (Yongyou 4949 and Yangliangyou 6) throughout two growing seasons (2014–2015). Results demonstrated that HSL provided the best indicator for predicting rice LNC, yielding a coefficient of determination (R(2)) of 0.74 and a root mean square error of 2.80 mg/g with a support vector machine, similar to the performance of ASD (R(2) = 0.73). Estimation of rice LNC could be significantly improved with the finer spectral resolution of HSL compared with MSL (R(2) = 0.56).