Mechanistic evidence for tracking the seasonality of photosynthesis with solar-induced fluorescence.

Northern hemisphere evergreen forests assimilate a significant fraction of global atmospheric CO but monitoring large-scale changes in gross primary production (GPP) in these systems is challenging. Recent advances in remote sensing allow the detection of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) emission from vegetation, which has been empirically linked to GPP at large spatial scales. This is particularly important in evergreen forests, where traditional remote-sensing techniques and terrestrial biosphere models fail to reproduce the seasonality of GPP.