Relationship of soil moisture with solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence and normalized difference vegetation index in different phenological stages

As an important part of water cycle in terrestrial ecosystem, soil moisture (SM) provides essential raw materials for vegetation photosynthesis, and its changes can affect the photosynthesis process and further affect vegetation growth and development. Thus, SM is always used to detect vegetation water stress and agricultural drought. Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) is signal with close ties to photosynthesis and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) can reflect the photosynthetic characteristics and photosynthetic yield of vegetations. However, there are few studies looking at the sensitivity of SIF and NDVI to SM changes over the entire growing season that includes multiple phenological stages. By making use of GLDAS-2 SM products along with GOME-2 SIF products and MODIS NDVI products, we discussed the detailed differences in the relationship of SM with SIF and NDVI in different phenological stages for a case study of Northeast China in 2014. Our results show that SIF integrates information from the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (fPAR), photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and SIF_yield, and is more effective than NDVI for monitoring the spatial extension and temporal dynamics of SM on a short time scale during the entire growing season. Especially, SIF_{PAR_norm} is the most sensitive to SM changes for eliminating the effects of seasonal variations in PAR. The relationship of SM with SIF and NDVI varies for different vegetation cover types and phenological stages. SIF is more sensitive to SM changes of grasslands in the maturity stage and  rainfed croplands  in the senescence stage than NDVI, and it has significant sensitivities to SM changes of forests in different phenological stages. The sensitivity of SIF and NDVI to SM changes in the senescence stages stems from the fact that vegetation photosynthesis is relatively weaker at this time than that in the maturity stage, and vegetations in the reproductive growth stage still need much water. Relevant results are of great significance to further understand the application of SIF in SM detection.