TY  - JOUR
AU  - Quiros-Vargas, Juan
AU  - Brogi, Cosimo
AU  - Damm, Alexander
AU  - Siegmann, Bastian
AU  - Rademske, Patrick
AU  - Burchard-Levine, Vicente
AU  - Krieger, Vera
AU  - Schmidt, Marius
AU  - Hanuš, Jan
AU  - Martello, Mauricio
AU  - Weihermüller, Lutz
AU  - Muller, Onno
AU  - Rascher, Uwe
TI  - Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) tracks variations in the soil-plant available water (PAW): a multiyear analysis on three crops
JO  - Science of remote Sensing
VL  - 13
SN  - 2666-0172
CY  - Amsterdam
PB  - Elsevier
M1  - FZJ-2026-00275
SP  - 100367 -
PY  - 2026
AB  - Restrictions in the soil water availability can strongly impact crop productivity. The increasing frequency andseverity of drought events, as a result of global warming, has made the assessment of drought stress effects onvegetation of utmost importance for meeting humanity's agricultural production needs. Recent advances inremote sensing of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) provide a basis for new approaches to directlyassess crop water status, since SIF is closely related to photosynthesis and, thus, to early plant physiologicalprocesses triggered by limitations in the water supply. This study provides new insights into the effect of varyinglevels of plant available water (PAW) in the soil on SIF emissions. We used several SIF datasets acquired with thehigh-performance airborne imaging spectrometer HyPlant during five subsequent vegetation periods (2018,2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022), each having a different precipitation regime. We normalized the SIF maps for theunderlying effects of canopy structure, calculated SIF emission efficiency (eSIF) and selected various crop fieldsincluding sugar beet, wheat and potato. Maps of eSIF were compared with spatial PAW patterns, which werederived from a forward soil infiltration model. Our results show positive correlation between eSIF and PAW inrainfed sugar beet fields at early growing stage, which remained consistent when accounting for variations in theleaf area index (LAI). This suggests that eSIF variations in sugar beet reflect the spatial reduction of photosynthesiscaused by reduced PAW. In irrigated potato fields, conversely, no eSIF-PAW correlations were found. Thisindicates the absence of leaf-level water stress in these well-irrigated fields. In rainfed winter wheat fields thatwere already in a late developmental stage, the variations in the SIF signal were dominated by locally differentripening, i.e., chlorophyll degradation, and therefore not representative of changing PAW. With this study, wecould demonstrate that normalized airborne SIF measurements are related to the functional water stress responsein different crops. This study supports future investigations on the development of SIF-based tools for theimprovement of water management in agriculture.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
DO  - DOI:10.1016/j.srs.2026.100367
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1050507
ER  -