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In this study, an arid grassland was selected, and the chlorophyll content of the leaf and canopy level was estimated based on Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) data using the PROSAIL radiative transfer (RT) model. Two vegetation indices (green chlorophyll index, CI_green, and greenness index, G) were selected to estimate the leaf and canopy chlorophyll content (LCC and CCC). By analysing the effect of soil background on the two indices, the LCC was divided into low and moderate-to-high levels. A different combination of the two indices was adopted at each level to improve the chlorophyll content estimation accuracy. The results suggested that the chlorophyll content estimated using the proposed method yielded a higher accuracy with coefficient of determination, R² = 0.84, root-mean-square error, RMSE = 9.67 μg cm⁻² for LCC and R² = 0.85, RMSE = 0.43 g m⁻² for CCC than that using CI_green …