This repository contains the Python bindings to the PROSPECT and SAIL leaf and canopy reflectance models. The code is written in FORTRAN. The original fortran code was downloaded from Jussieu. I only added a function to simplify writing the wrappers, and you should go to that page to get newer versions of the code. A recent review of the use of both models is availabe in this paper.

The installation of the bindings is quite straightforward: unpack the distribution and run the following command

python setup.py install

You can usually install it to your user's directory (if you haven't got superuser privileges) by

python setup.py install --user

You will need a working FORTRAN compiler. I have only tested this with GCC on Linux, but it should work on other systems. You can also pass optimisation flags to the compiler:

python setup.py config_fc --fcompiler=gnu95 --arch=-march=native --opt=-O3 install --user

The bindings offer a single function, run_prosail.

retval = run_prosail(n,cab,car,cbrown,cw,cm,lai,lidfa,lidfb,psoil,hspot,tts,tto,psi)

The parameters that are fed into run_prosail are

lidfa and lidfb parameters control the leaf angle distribution. Typical distributions are given by the following parameter choices:

A simple example of using bindings would be

cm=0.009 cab = 80 car = 15 cbrown = 0 cw = 0.001 lidfa = 0 lidfb = 0 psoil = 0 hspot = 0.01 tts = 30 tto = 10 phi = 0 lai = np.arange ( 0, 5, 0.2 ) for l in lai: plt.plot ( run_prosail(1.5,cab,car,cbrown,cw,cm,l,lidfa,lidfb,psoil,hspot,tts,tto,psi))

This results in a simulation of surface reflectance (from 400 to 2500 nm) as a function of LAI and under the other parameters' prescribed values. This yields the following