A remote observation of any plant canopy derives from the collective effect of all the individual component parts including leaves

stems

flowers

and the soil background when the canopy is sparse. Therefore

canopy remote signatures can best understood by characterizing at least the most important components. The most important radiative components in live vegetation are leaves. The partitioning of radiation as reflectance transmitted

or absorbed energy depends on a number of factors including leaf cellar structure

leaf pubescence and roughness

leaf morphology

and leaf surface characteristics. Reflectance from leaves can be thought of as having both Lambertian （diffuse） and nonLambertian （specular） components. The diffuse

Lambertain character of leaf reflectance emanates primarily from the interior of the leaf through multiple scattering. The specular and nonLambertain character of the leaf reflectance arises at the surface of the leaf.In this paper

we introduce a laboratory goniometer

which was designed and built to measure and model light scattered by individual plant leaves. Goniometric measurements were taken during the summer of 1995 on individual plant leaves of soybean

corn

cotton in Changchun. Source wavebands selected were VIS band （600-690nm） and NIR band （690-760nm）

and three illumination angles were used

20°

40°

and 60° from the normal on both the adaxial（top） and abaxial（bottom） side of leaves. View zenith angles are also used

20°

40°

and 60° for every incident angle. Reflected radiation was measured at 10° increments between 0° and 350° along view zenith angles and illumination angles. The polaroids of0° and 90° are used to investigate polarized reflectance of leaf in the visible and near infrared wavelength ranges. These results shows the leaf BRDF depends strongly on wavelength

and

has a marked dependence on source incidence angle

view zenith angle and view azimuth angle. The bidirectional reflectance characteristics of individual leaves should be useful in formulating mathematical representations of nonLambertian leaf properties in radiative transfer models

and this work be continued further to obtain detailed information for s variety of species and leaf conditions.