Quantifying winter wheat residue biomass with a spectral angle index derived from China Environmental Satellite data

• Angles formed at the NIRIRS vertex by the three vertices at R, NIRIRS, and SWIR (ANIRIRS) of HJ-1B can explain 81% of winter wheat residue biomass.
• ANIRIRS offers a simple, but effective, alternative method to methods based on hyperspectral data.
• ANIRIRS performs well in winter wheat residue biomass estimation with different residue treatments (both standing and laid flat crop residue).
• ANIRIRS adequately estimates winter wheat residue biomass at different residue moisture conditions.
• ANIRIRS is a potential method for quantifying crop residue biomass broadly.

Quantification of crop residue biomass on cultivated lands is essential for studies of carbon cycling of agroecosystems, soil-atmospheric carbon exchange and Earth systems modeling. Previous studies focus on estimating crop residue cover (CRC) while limited research exists on quantifying crop residue biomass. This study takes advantage of the high temporal resolution of the China Environmental Satellite (HJ-1) data and utilizes the band configuration features of HJ-1B data to establish spectral angle indices to estimate crop residue biomass. Angles formed at the NIRIRS vertex by the three vertices at R, NIRIRS, and SWIR (ANIRIRS) of HJ-1B can effectively indicate winter wheat residue biomass. A coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.811 was obtained between measured winter wheat residue biomass and ANIRIRS derived from simulated HJ-1B reflectance data. The ability of ANIRIRS for quantifying winter wheat residue biomass using HJ-1B satellite data was also validated and evaluated. Results indicate that ANIRIRS performed well in estimating winter wheat residue biomass with different residue treatments; the root mean square error (RMSE) between measured and estimated residue biomass was 0.038 kg/m2. ANIRIRS is a potential method for quantifying winter wheat residue biomass at a large scale due to wide swath width (350 km) and four-day revisit rate of the HJ-1 satellite. While ANIRIRS can adequately estimate winter wheat residue biomass at different residue moisture conditions, the feasibility of ANIRIRS for winter wheat residue biomass estimation at different fractional coverage of green vegetation and different environmental conditions (soil type, soil moisture content, and crop residue type) needs to be further explored.