Does forest colour tell how much carbon dioxide is absorbed by deciduous trees?

Forests play the important role of fixing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and storing the carbon as biomass and soil organic matter. In the northern hemisphere, CO2 concentration fluctuates with the seasonality of photosynthesis of plants. Recent global warming has made the arrival of spring earlier, and leaves appear sooner. How does this influence the carbon cycle in forests? In an oak-dominated (Quercus robur L.) forest in Hampshire UK, photographs of the forest canopy were taken every half an hour over two years using two different digital camera systems at different viewing angles. The transition of colours from both cameras showed the seasonality of the forest: when budbreak started, the green sharply increased, gradually decreased in summer, and returned to the original level when leaves were shed; the rise of red colour was shown when oak leaves turned yellow in autumn. We modelled the photosynthesis of the forest using the extracted colours to compare with the flux measurements. Our results suggest that digital cameras can be an important aid in monitoring forests and the colour signals can be a useful proxy for photosynthesis. You can read the original paper here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12026/abstract And the lay summary for this and other FE papers here: http://bit.ly/1187t27