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Scalable indicators are promising to assess ecosystem services. In a large (660 ha) coffee agroforestry farm, we calibrated the relationship between the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), calculated on a High Resolution (HR) satellite image and ground-truth LAI, providing a 2-layer (shade trees and coffee) LAI calibration with LAI 2000 and a new technique based on the cumulative distribution of LAI along transects. The effective and apparent clumping of coffee leaves were computed (0.76 and 0.89, respectively). We also calibrated the relationship between the derived HR-LAI farm map and NDVI from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) in order to re-construct LAI time-series (2001–2011).

Coffee LAI, as derived from MODIS after substracting the contribution of shade tree LAI varied seasonally between 2.4 and 4.4 m² m⁻², with a maximum by the end of wet season (peak of …