Prospects for Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence Remote Sensing from the SIFIS Payload Onboard the TECIS-1 Satellite

The importance of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) to monitoring vegetation photosynthesis has attracted much attention from the ecological and remote sensing research communities. Space-borne SIF products have been obtained owing to the rapid development of atmospheric satellites in recent years. The SIF Imaging Spectrometer (SIFIS) is a payload onboard the upcoming Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon Inventory Satellite (TECIS-1) that is specifically designed for SIF monitoring. We conducted an in situ experiment to evaluate the performance of SIFIS on spectral measurement and SIF retrieval through comparison to the commercial spectrometer QE Pro. Disregarding the spatiotemporal mismatch between the collected measurements of the two spectrometers, the radiance spectra obtained synchronously by SIFIS and QE Pro showed a high level of consistency. The SIF retrieval, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and near-infrared radiance of vegetation (NIRvR) results for a push-broom image shows consistent spatial distributions over both vegetated and nonvegetated surfaces. A quantitative comparison was conducted by strictly filtering matching pixels. For the far-red band, a high correlation was obtained between the SIF retrieval performances of SIFIS and QE Pro with R2=0.70 and RMSE=0.30 mW m−2 sr−−1 nm−1. However, a relatively poor correlation was observed for the red band with an R2 value of 0.23 and an RMSE of 0.26 mWm−2sr-−1nm−1. Despite the large uncertainties associated with this experiment, the results indicate that TECIS-1 should offer a reliable SIF monitoring performance after its launch.