Maximal light use efficiency (LUE) is an important ecological index of a vegetation essential attribute, and a key parameter of the LUE-based model for estimating large-scale vegetation productivity by remote sensing technology. However, although currently used in different models there still exists extensive controversy. This paper takes the Zoige Plateau in China as a case area to develop a new approach for estimating the maximal LUEs for different vegetation. Based on an existing land cover

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... ap and MODIS NDVI product, the linear unmixing method with a moving window was adopted to estimate the time-series NDVI for different end members in a MODIS NDVI pixel; then Particle Swarm Optimizer (PSO) was applied to search for the optimization of LUE retrievals through the CASA (Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach) model combined with time-series NDVI and ground measurements. The derived maximal LUEs present significant differences among various vegetation types. These are 0.669 gC·MJ −1 , 0.450 gC·MJ −1 and 0.126 gC·MJ −1 for the xerophilous grasslands with high, moderate and low vegetation fraction respectively, 0.192 gC·MJ −1 for the hygrophilous grasslands, and 0.125 gC·MJ −1 for the helobious grasslands. The field validation shows that the estimated net primary productivity (NPP) by the derived maximal LUE is closely related to the ground references, with R 2 of 0.8698 and root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 59.37 gC·m −2 ·a −1 . This indicates that the default set in the CASA model is not suitable for NPP estimation for the regional mountain area. The derived maximal LUEs can OPEN ACCESS Remote Sens. 2012, 4 3858 significantly improve the capability of NPP mapping, and open up the perspective for long-term monitoring of vegetation ecological health and ecosystem productivity by combining the LUE-based model with remote sensing observations.