Linking photosynthesis and sun-induced fluorescence at sub-daily to seasonal scales

Abstract Due to its close link to the photosynthetic process, sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (F) opens new possibilities to study dynamics of photosynthetic light reactions and to quantify CO2 assimilation rates. Although recent studies show that F is linearly related to gross primary production (GPP) on coarse spatial and temporal scales, it is argued that this relationship may be mainly driven by seasonal changes in absorbed photochemical active radiation (APAR) and less by the plant light use efficiency (LUE). In this work a high-resolution spectrometer was used to continuously measure red and far-red fluorescence and different reflectance indices within a sugar beet field during t…