Using direct and indirect measurements of leaf area index to characterize the shrub canopy in an ombrotrophic peatland

Leaf area index (LAI) is an important ecological parameter that characterizes the interface between a vegetation canopy and the atmosphere. Indirect measurements of LAI using optical techniques such as the LAI-2000 plant canopy analyzer have been routinely conducted for different vegetation canopies including forests and agricultural crops. However, little attention has been paid to shrub canopies of peatlands, where microtopography presents an additional challenge in the optical measurement of shrub LAI. Based on an established equation for boreal forest canopies to derive LAI from “effective” LAI obtained from the LAI-2000 instrument, we evaluated the overall performance of this indirect measurement technique by comparing it with destructive sampling results for the shrub canopy of a precipitation-fed (ombrotrophic) peatland near Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Under the assumption of no foliage clumping in the shrub canopy, we demonstrate that the contribution of woody canopy elements to light interception has to be taken into account. For this purpose, we determined species-specific woody-to-total area ratios for the five major shrub species. Furthermore, we evaluated the combined effect of microtopographic position of the measurement location and multiple light scattering within the shrub canopy on the measurements. Taking both the contribution of woody canopy elements to light interception and the combined effect of microtopography and multiple light scattering into account, the agreement between direct and indirect measurements of shrub LAI is good (R2 = 0.74), and intercept and slope of the linear correlation are not significantly different from 0 (p = 0.3575) and 1 (p = 0.7489), respectively. The indirect approach refined through this study provides a reliable method for quick measurements of shrub LAI in ombrotrophic peatlands.