Assessment of the Effect of PROSAILH for Open and Closed Shrublands Live Fuel Moisture Content Retrieval

Spatiotemporal mapping of shrublands live fuel moisture content (LFMC) is of critical significance for wildfire risk assessment. Previous studies generally estimated the shrubland LFMC based on PROSAILH radiative transfer model (RTM), the model assuming that shrub canopies were homogenously and continuously distributed. We argued that this treatment was inaccurate since shrublands present diverse distribution and structure that normally can be classified into closed and open shrublands according to IGBP scheme. To this end, this study explored the effects of PROSAILH for open and closed shrublands LFMC retrieval based on National Fuel Moisture Database. The results showed that 1) PROSAILH performed poorly on open shrublands LFMC retrieval due to heterogeneity, whereas 2) better results were found for closed shrublands LFMC cases. Thus, this research suggested that PROSAILH is not suitable for all types of shrublands LFMC retrievals.