Selection of Informative Spectral Bands for PLS Models to Estimate Foliar Chlorophyll Content Using Hyperspectral Reflectance

Partial least-squares (PLS) regression is a popular method for modeling chemical constituents from spectroscopic data and has been widely applied to retrieve leaf chemical components via hyperspectral remote sensing. However, one persistent challenge for applying the PLS regression is the selection of informative spectral bands among the vast array of acquired spectra. No consensus has been reached yet on how to select informative bands regardless of many techniques being proposed. In this paper, we have composited four individual data sets containing a total of 598 leaf samples from various species to evaluate four different band elimination/selection methods. Results revealed that the stepwise-PLS approach was optimal to estimate leaf chlorophyll content even under different spectral resolutions, from which informative bands were identified. Informative bands, in general, include bands inside the near-infrared (NIR), and in addition, one within the blue range and one within the red range. With such combinations, the PLS regression models meet the requirement for accurate leaf chlorophyll estimation. For most PLS regression models, their accuracies decreased with the reduction of spectral resolution, but the stepwise-PLS approach could consistently estimate the chlorophyll content at different spectral resolutions (with R2 ≥ 0.77 for resolutions <; 20 nm). The findings, hence, provide valuable insights for selecting informative spectral bands for PLS analysis and lay a strong foundation for retrieving foliar biochemical content using hyperspectral remote sensing data.